


Once Upon a Christmas Wedding at Haddock Manor

by tysonrunningfox



Series: Hallmark Christmas [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, because i feel like spewing mistletoe, eretlout christmas wedding, hallmark christmas movie fic, hiccstrid high school sweethearts, hiccup is the big city girl returning to the small town because he lost his christmas spirit, if i run into plot issues im gonna duct tape mistletoe to it, there is a plucky child, warning 2: i am writing this in three days, warning: this will not make sense, yes this is just an endless string of christmas events and tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysonrunningfox/pseuds/tysonrunningfox
Summary: Hiccup Haddock has been in the big city for so long that he lost all of his Christmas spirit.  This is inconvenient when he is summoned home to the family Christmas tree farm for his cousin's holiday nuptials, where he also, of course, has to interface with Astrid, his high school sweetheart gone sour while she helps take care of her plucky niece while wearing a lot of flannel and having a lot of Christmas spirit.  The Hallmark Christmas Movie AU that no one asked for.
Relationships: Eret/Snotlout Jorgenson, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson
Series: Hallmark Christmas [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594252
Comments: 82
Kudos: 153





	1. Chapter 1

“Kicking off the countdown to Christmas, this is Tuff—”

“This is Gruff!” 

“No, we talked about this, Tuff and Gruff sounds better—”

“This is Gruff, live from the BRK 102.5 booth at the Christmas kickoff party, sponsored by Haddock Tree Farms—” 

“And Tuff. Just play Ruff, I messed it up again.” The first two notes of Jingle Bell Rock are off-key until the bassist finds her rhythm, mitigating the disaster, and Hiccup promptly loses interest, clicking off his rental SUVs radio. 

He’d wish that someone would come up with a new Christmas song if there weren’t far too many already. 

How many ways are there to jingle, really? Bells always sound the same and it’s not magical. In fact, the presence of the bells means that the night is never really silent, and he thinks the three Berk Christmas Festival billboards he’s driven past preclude it from being holy either. Plus, all the bells would wake up the baby that even more than two millennia later, everyone is sure should be uncomfortable in a manger. 

Grandma lives in Palm Springs. There are no reindeer there. 

“They’re all here,” he mumbles to himself, as he drives past the paddock on the Haddock Manor grounds, counting eight snowy butts, “eating their weight out of profits he doesn’t have.” 

The base of the driveway decorated with twinkly lights and a lit sign guides him to park by the neat rows of firs and he sits in the car for a moment, staring at the crowd as they make their way towards the party. The entire Christmas obsessed town of Berk is going to be here tonight and Hiccup is somehow lucky enough to be part of it again after ten years spent carefully avoiding the privilege. 

Of course Snotlout would insist on a Christmas wedding. It’s just like him to lurk around the attention, trying to poach what he can. 

When he finally gets out of the car, it sounds like Berk. That hits more than the lights or the smell of freshly cut fir trees, sacrificed to a dying industry quickly being replaced with plastic. It’s the sound. The trickling carols from the radio booth deadened by the hush of slowly falling snow. It’s the car tires crunching in the ice. It’s the people saying names like they know all the same people and everyone’s business is everyone’s business. 

It’s the sound of his own back on the ground when he steps wrong on a patch of ice. 

“Are you alright?” Someone asks immediately, sincerely, their small-town curiosity mingling with generosity to the point that both are rendered useless. 

“I’m fine,” Hiccup insists, using the side of his rental to stand back up, warding the wannabe helpful bystander off with his sternest handwave. “Fine. Really.” 

“Those shoes—”

“Came from work.” He brushes off the friendly attempt at advice, “I’m fine.” 

“If you’re sure—”

“I’m sure. Dented tailbone, pride already crumpled beyond belief.” He gives the good Samaritan a thumbs up, already regressed a decade and desperately miserable with how little he knows how to fit in. 

“Ok…well, Merry Christmas!” 

“And a happy Solstice to you,” Hiccup waves them off with a forced smile that doubles as gritted teeth before he forces himself up the hill towards the center of the festivities. 

He waits for someone to recognize him. It’s passive, but easier than announcing himself. Easier than approaching the nearest person in flannel and a shearling trimmed coat and asking them where Stoick “The Vast” Haddock is, because his long-wandering son has stumbled home at last. Easier than asking anyone how they feel about the wedding on Christmas. 

He doesn’t look much different than he did at eighteen, especially since he gave up on the beard. The babyface ceased to be a bad thing somewhere around twenty-six, when his surprising know-how started to be an asset. 

The entire walk up the hill he expects someone to pull him aside, to ask him where he’s been or…well, why he’s been somewhere other than here, but it doesn’t happen. He recognizes people, sure, people from high school or his dad’s acquaintances, but largely there’s a veil of winter clothes between any sort of personal connection. People are largely identifiable by their hats or their coats or the gloves they’re unintentionally abandoning in the snow. 

And then he sees her. 

Fight or Flight isn’t really a dichotomy. There’s a third option. Deer in the headlights is one way to put it, or since this is Berk, reindeer in the sled-lights, but deer don’t actually have codependent instincts towards cars. Cars confuse them in a mortal peril way, and it’s not that Astrid Hofferson isn’t capable of inspiring that level of fear or respect, it’s that the small blonde child holding her hand has no place in the equation. 

He does math. 

Ten years. Ten and a half really, considering the season. 

And he doesn’t know much about kids, but that kid doesn’t look ten years old. She looks like Astrid though, upturned nose and blonde curls, and Hiccup knows he doesn’t check Facebook as rigorously as his great-aunts would like him to, but he thinks he would have seen this. Or someone would have told him about this. 

Sure, he has college friends who are married with a couple of kids. 

None of them are Astrid though. 

Especially because he doubts she considers him a friend, after, well…everything. 

Hiccup spent the plane ride and the drive and to be honest, a couple of nights before leaving thinking about what it would be like to see his dad again. What he might have to explain. What his dad would say about his coat or his hair or his job. 

He didn’t let himself think about Astrid. He knew when he got the wedding invitation that she’d likely be there and they’d have to say hi and smile and probably shake hands, or something, but he didn’t think about what it would feel like to see her. 

Especially bundled up and laughing, tapping her fingertip on the nose of the child who looks so much like her. She looks like she did at eighteen too, in that her braid is the same and her smile is the same, and the way his heart twitches when she glances his way and freezes is entirely different. 

Dread. Guilt. A shred of excitement that he doesn’t want to let himself feel. 

What will she think of him? In his tailored coat and shined shoes. He actually used that kiosk at the airport. 

She looks him up and down and answers the question with an eye-roll and that always threateningly charismatic set of her shoulders before she raises her hand and waves. 

He waves back. 

“Hey,” she calls down the hill and he finds himself closing the gap between them, even though he should turn around and leave. Send Snotlout an exorbitantly expensive present and congratulate him. 

“Hey, Astrid,” he clears his throat, “hi, Astrid. Um, Hi.” He looks at the child and freezes, metaphorically and literally, as the slush starts to successfully emigrate into his shoes. 

“Abby, this is…Hiccup.” Astrid says flatly, adjusting her flannel and her shearling lined coat and he doesn’t understand how she looks like the rest of them even while she sticks out. 

“Abby.” He nods, looking at the child with Astrid’s eyebrows and hair and a hat he almost recognizes. “Abby, who is your…”

“My niece,” Astrid clarifies and Hiccup can’t quantify the weight off of his chest. 

“Oh! Of course, hello Abby, it’s nice to meet you.” 

“Yeah,” she wrinkles her nose—her Astrid nose—and looks up at Astrid, “can we get cocoa?” 

“Sure.” Astrid pauses the way she didn’t used to pause. Polite. Maybe a little curious in a way that makes him glad he wore the coat and shined his shoes. “You here for the wedding?” 

“Yeah,” he shrugs, “are you going?” 

“Something like that,” she snorts, grabbing her niece’s hand and tugging her towards the nearest cocoa stand. “I’ll see you then.” 

“Oh. Right.” He wants to say something nice, maybe, to ask how she’s been. To inquire as to the whereabouts of the supposed husband he imagined for a terrifying dozen seconds, even though it’s none of his business. “Merry Christmas.” 

He hates himself. Astrid looks at him like she hates him too and he deserves it. 

“Happy Holidays.” 

Abby echoes the sentiment, too cute to allow a rebuttal. 

That went…well, it’s gone now. 

Hiccup tries not to dwell on the past as he heads further towards the house. He wishes that coming home usually had less of a festival, but the three to four booths that he has to avoid to get to the back door feels about like the slew of relatives his dad lines up, and the feeling of being sixteen that Astrid reawakened only amplifies when he gets inside and carefully shuts the door behind him. 

Now what? Does he go upstairs to his childhood bedroom? 

“Hiccup?” His dad’s voice booms, so much clearer than it ever is through the phone and of course he gets to stand here and talk. Or something like it. 

Some Splenda-esque Haddock branded version of conversation. 

“Hey dad.” 

Stoick Haddock pauses in the doorway, taking in Hiccup’s shiny shoes as Hiccup assesses the white in his beard. There’s more than there used to be and Hiccup supposes it fits the season, but he wonders what it looks like in January when the Christmas decorations are put away and there’s no inflatable big guy in red to match. 

“Come here,” his dad hugs him, too tight, and he yelps when his shiny shoes leave the kitchen floor. 

“Dad!” 

“It’s been too long,” his dad steps back, hands on his shoulders, and Hiccup doesn’t remember the last time he felt so small. Literally small, that is, he felt pretty metaphorically small under Astrid’s judgmental gaze outside. “You look well.” 

“You too.” Hiccup didn’t really stick around to get used to the whole talking-to-your-parents-but-you’re-both-adults thing and it always feels like acting. “The place is—”

“Party’s in full swing, come help me host—”

“I had a long flight—”

“Like all good things, son, Christmas spirit takes hard work.” His dad flexes a behemoth bicep and Hiccup resigns himself to the miserable part of this trip. 

Well, one of the miserable parts. 

“That’s um—aside from the wedding, which Snotlout the first blushing groom in the family to walk down the aisle? I didn’t see that one coming. Between me and him, I mean, the fact that he found someone who could tolerate him first,” Hiccup laughs, wooden and seventeen again, trying to explain why he’s sneaking out. 

“You haven’t met Eret then!” Stoick Haddock’s patented shoulder grip and drag is impossible to dodge but Hiccup tries in vain to drag his feet anyway as his dad guides him back towards the door. “Good kid. I say kid, but of course he’s thirty something. At some point, everyone starts looking like a kid to you.” 

“Dad,” Hiccup tries again, the old front door creaking open as his dad practically shoves him out into the snow, “that’s part of what I’ve been trying to talk to you about. I know you’ve had the tree farm for a long time—”

“Seven generations.” 

“And maybe seven generations ago, it made a profit—”

“It’s not about the money, son,” his dad looks out at the rows of firs and the people wandering between them, searching for the perfect fire hazard to briefly preserve in their living room as it sheds needles all over the floor, giving advertising opportunities to the bloated slipper industry. “Maybe Christmas at home can help you remember that.” 

“I’ll look at your books later—”

“Sure. Sure, after the party. Fishlegs made my grandfather’s hot chocolate recipe, let’s go get some.” 

“I’m not really dressed for the Berk winter,” Hiccup tries one last time, shivering for dramatic effect even as his remaining toes start to chill. 

“Hot chocolate will fix you right up,” his dad starts down the hill. 

“That’s not an FDA approved cure for frostbite but…and he’s not listening.” Something tells Hiccup that this is going to be a pattern. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Enough with the schematics,” Snotlout snatches the planner out of Astrid’s hand and tucks it into his coat pocket before pointing at his face, “if you make me read your tiny little handwriting any more, my eyes are going to look tired in my wedding pictures, and I’ll never forgive you.” 

“I’ll get you some reading glasses then.” 

“You know I don’t look good in glasses—”

“Babe,” Eret cuts off the rant before it starts and Astrid gives him a grateful look, “I believe that Astrid is just trying to get your opinion on the final ceremony setup, given that you’re her business partner.” 

“Yeah, and today I’m the groom.” 

“You’re the groom on Christmas day, until then you have half the stake in Hofferson Event Planning—”

“When I gave you money to start your company, I didn’t think you’d be making me plan my own wedding, it’s supposed to be my day—”

“Our day,” Eret chides him gently, slipping his hand into Snotlout’s coat pocket to retrieve Astrid’s planner, “I will be the groom too,” he flicks to the crumpled page that Astrid was just trying to get an opinion on, “and this looks great.” 

“Thank you for the input,” Astrid puts the planner away though, resigning herself to focus on the party she’s currently responsible for instead of the one looming on the horizon. “Have I told you recently that he’s way too good for you?” 

“Not this week,” Snotlout leans into Eret’s shoulder, “have I reminded you that he’s taken?” 

“Was that what you were doing under the mistletoe?” She jokes, pointing at the sprig hanging between the hot chocolate stand and the arts and crafts station where Abby is currently huddled by a space heater to dry the glitter onto a homemade ornament. Ruffnut is still playing, and Astrid’s parents can’t make it until later, and as much as she doesn’t mind Abby-duty, it’s hard when she’s working. 

“Oh, absolutely.” Snotlout freezes and looks over Astrid’s shoulder, raising an eyebrow, “my cousin RSVP-ed, right?” 

“Which cousin?” Astrid fumbles for her planner again but Snotlout stops her. 

“Hiccup.” 

“Why didn’t you just say that?” She scoffs, crossing her arms, “and yes, he RSVP-ed as yes last week. Why?” 

“No reason, he’s just right behind you and walking this way with his dad.” 

“Why didn’t you just say _that_?” Astrid whisper yells, fixing her jacket and turning around, forcing her voice as aggressively professional as she thinks she can get away with. “Mr. Haddock! Good to see you!” She holds her hand out to shake her _client’s_ , but he hugs her instead, thumping her hard on the back. 

“Astrid set all of this up,” Stoick grins at her and then looks purposefully at Hiccup, like he’s presenting her to his son somehow, which is probably exactly what he’s doing. “Better than the get together I used to pull together at the last moment, don’t you think?” 

“Right,” Hiccup nods, smart enough to avoid eye contact even as he shivers in his thin coat. 

She tells herself again that she wouldn’t have recognized him on the street. If she hadn’t been expecting him, if she hadn’t been waiting for him to show up and trying not to wonder what it would be like for the last week. If she hadn’t been so fixated on not caring whether he actually showed up or not, he would just be a gangly guy underdressed for the weather and she wouldn’t have given him a second thought. 

“She thinks Haddock manor has potential as a ‘venue’, like people will actually pay to have their events at my old house,” Stoick laughs like it’s ridiculous and Astrid points at the house, every eve dripping with Christmas lights. 

“I’m people,” Eret holds his hand out towards Hiccup, “you must be Stoicks’s son, I’m Eret, Snotlout’s fiancé.” 

Hiccup’s eyes widen slightly as he shakes Eret’s hand and Astrid’s usual mental game of guessing whether people are more shocked by Eret’s looks or face tattoos or the warm way he admits he’s attached to Snotlout without embarrassment isn’t any fun. Not when it would mean assessing Hiccup, her eyes finding minute differences in his face from when she used to know it as well as her own. 

“You guys are getting married?” Hiccup asks, stunned by some combination of Eret’s stunning traits as his eyes flick between Snotlout and his fiancé. “Here? I mean you guys are getting married here? At my house?” 

“Astrid has it all figured out,” Stoick brags again and Astrid refuses to blush. “She thinks she can sell it as a wedding package or something, I don’t get all the specifics, back when your mother and I got married it was the church or the courthouse but apparently it’s a big business. She thinks I can get some year-round money coming in.” 

“That seems like a lot more work than selling the farm to IKEA,” Hiccup says flatly, waiting for a laugh that doesn’t come, “Scandinavian roots, uses a lot of pine, I thought it made sense.” 

“Auntie!” Abby interrupts the conversation at just the right time, flinging her arms around Astrid’s hips and staring suspiciously at Hiccup for a quick second before Stoick is crouching down to greet her. 

“Merry Christmas, Miss Abigail,” he laughs his booming laugh, “are you enjoying yourself?” 

“Hi Mr. Haddock,” she says politely, obediently, before holding out her ornament on a glittery glove, “I made this.” 

“Is that a reindeer?” Stoick points down the hill, “looks just like mine.” 

“You can have it,” Abby holds it out to him, not generous so much as eyeing the craft tent to go make another glittery monstrosity which she’ll then wave around in Astrid’s car. 

“It doesn’t match the wedding’s color scheme, Abs,” Snotlout ruffles her hair, “so it can’t go on his tree.” 

“I’ll find a place for it,” Stoick takes the ornament and winks, “so, have you had a chance to visit Santa yet this year?” 

“My mom’s going to take me to the mall this weekend, if she has time,” Abby shrugs, “it’s not real though. I know she’s not going to get me a bike and Santa can’t do anything about it.” 

“Who told you it’s not real?” Stoick looks suspiciously at Snotlout who holds his hands up. 

“I gave Santa my wish list months ago, well, I sent my registry up north—”

“A bike, huh?” Stoick mulls that over for a second before standing back up, tucking his new ornament into his pocket, “I’ll see if I can get in touch with the big guy.” 

“Can we get cocoa now?” Abby grabs Astrid’s hand and drags, little boots skidding in the snow, and Astrid tries to cushion her stern look. 

“I told you I’m working at this party, hun, give me a second.” 

“I’ll take her,” Eret offers, because he’s a saint, and Astrid raises an eyebrow at Abby while she mulls the offer over. “I’ll make sure you get double marshmallows.” 

“And whipped cream?” 

“Hey, don’t be greedy,” Astrid chides her, and Abby lets go, wiping glittery hands on her snowpants. 

“Double marshmallows is good.” 

“Good for me too,” Snotlout grabs Abby’s hand that Eretson isn’t holding and helps swing her into the air with a loud peal of laughter. 

“She’s the spitting image of your brother,” Stoick says as soon as Abby is out of hearing range, “I know Ruffnut’s her mother but she’s a Hofferson through and through.” 

“In looks maybe,” Astrid shakes her head, “she’s got that Thorston head for chaos.” 

“Your brother,” Hiccup blurts and Astrid had almost convinced herself that she’d forgotten he was here. He frowns, shivering breath coming out in a wispy cloud. 

“I’ve got to go feed the reindeer,” Stoick claps his son hard enough on the shoulder that he almost slips even though he’s standing still, “hold down the fort for me.” 

“Dad, I still want to talk!” 

Stoick brushes him off and then they’re alone, standing in the middle of his family tree farm like it’s a decade ago, except she doesn’t have anything to say to him. 

“I’ve got to go check on the band,” she says the excuse out loud even though she doesn’t have to, taking a too wide circle around him and walking off towards the radio booth. It was a huge favor for Tuffnut to come and advertise the party and she thinks it’s starting to pay off, the two food trucks she hired accumulating lines in the parking lot. 

She resists the urge to look back up the hill at the decorated Haddock Manor, sure that she’ll see Hiccup stumbling haplessly after her. Or no, not sure, she’s never sure he’ll follow, but another difference between now and a decade ago is that she doesn’t want him to. 

This week is the most important week ever for her business. She has it stacked until the wedding on Christmas, parties and events every day all day, enough Christmas cheer packed into a week to fill the website she’s hoping Stoick will let her push out at the end of it. The Haddock Manor is historic, and Berk is just far enough off the beaten path to get weekend traffic and people who want to have their events somewhere scenic but don’t want to fly. 

And with the old cabin finally fixed up as a honeymooner’s suite, she can advertise a package. A real venue owned by someone she knows who will hopefully let her manage it. No more being strung along and pushed around by blowhards who think having the rental agreement to the back room at a golf course is a badge of battle won honor or something. 

Ruffnut waves from the stage where she’s strumming easily at her bass and waiting for Tuffnut to signal the next performance. She raises her shoulder asking where her daughter is and Astrid holds one hand above her head and the other at shoulder level, indicating she’s with Eret and Snotlout. Nothing could better demonstrate how much things have changed in the last two years. 

Ruffnut depends on Astrid for childcare, but it’s ok to tap Snotlout in, as long as Eret is in the picture. 

She checks the donation website, glad to see that a few of Tuff’s radio contacts came through, and pulls up Instagram to post a few pictures, but of course when she turns around to get the Manor in the background, Hiccup is a sole miserable black hole in the middle of the cheery shot. She glares at him, hoping he’ll get the picture and move without her saying anything, but he just stands there, waving back cautiously when she obviously gestures for him to move out of the way. 

“You’re in my shot,” she calls, and he perks up slightly before clumsily scurrying down the hill. Towards her. Until he’s behind her shoulder, which does make it impossible for him to be in the shot, but she doesn’t want him around her either. 

She has enough on her plate right now without agonizing over Hiccup. 

“Looks good.” 

“I know. That’s why I decorated it like this,” she snaps, turning to face him, “what do you want?” 

“I was hoping we could talk.” 

“About?” She doesn’t sound hopeful. She doesn’t think he’s going to talk about high school or college or silence. It’s Hiccup, he’s going to do his Hiccup thing where he pretends that somehow everything ended up magically ok again while he cooled off. 

“About my dad.” 

It’s not what she expects, but that’s better than the fake friendliness. 

“What about him?” 

“He…he’s so proud, you know him, he’s not—have you seen the sales numbers from this place? Down every single Christmas, the production isn’t enough to sell to the big box wholesalers and tree tourism just isn’t part of the hustle and bustle of a modern American holiday season—”

“Skip your pitch.” She takes another picture just as someone chops down a Douglas fir, the sawdust mingling with the slow falling snow. 

“It’s not sustainable.” 

“Pretty sure growing trees is good for the planet in any context.” She starts back up the hill towards the hot cocoa station, wondering if Fishlegs still has the peppermint schnapps under the counter for those in the know who ask very very nicely. She hopes so. “I’ve got to go find Abby before she’s too sugared up to function, so if you could just get to the point. If you even have a point.” 

“Right. Abby.” He almost touches her shoulder but thinks better of it, exhaling a deflating sigh, “your brother, I heard about—I should have said something—”

“Are you here to tell me that my business can’t make any money for this place or are you here to bring up my dead brother?” She snaps, “because having both those conversations at once after not talking for the better part of a decade isn’t how I’d like to spend my night.” 

“I—messed that up.” He admits, surface level and infuriating, with his stupid haircut that probably cost more than her entire outfit. 

“See you at the wedding, Hiccup.” She stomps off before he can say anything else, superior traction paving the way to the cocoa stand that better have schnapps. 


	3. Chapter 3

Hiccup’s phone ringing wakes him up at six-thirty the next morning, before he’s even thought about confronting the day, and he falls out of his childhood twin bed fumbling for it, smacking his forehead on the bedside table. 

“Hello?” He grumbles into the receiver, waiting for the work emergency that’s going to let him ditch out on the whole idea of his Berkian homecoming, but the yelling voice on the other end sounds nothing like his manager. 

“What the _fuck_ did you say to Astrid?” 

“What?” He holds his phone away from his ear as the yelling continues, his half asleep, bedside table addled head struggling to parse through the ‘Snotlout Jorgenson’ on the screen. “Snotlout?” 

“No, dipshit, it’s the ghost of Christmas Present and I’d kick sense into you if I weren’t worried I’d have bruised knuckles in my wedding pictures.” 

“I didn’t know you had my number.” 

“And I invited you to my wedding to be polite—”

“I’m hanging up—”

“Ok, ok. I invited you to my wedding expecting you wouldn’t want to show your face in this town, so you’d send an expensive present.” Snotlout quiets down enough that Hiccup can find his bearings to sit on the edge of the bed. 

“I thought about it,” he sighs, “why are you calling me before dawn to yell?” 

“What did you say or do or say you were going to do to make Astrid so pissy?” 

“If I pissed Astrid off, I’m pretty sure she can yell at me herself, I’m going back to bed—”

“Most weeks, sure.” Snotlout’s voice dips, deadly and surprisingly awake considering the hour. “But this week, Astrid is literally the third most important person in the entire world and that makes you pissing her off my problem. She is the one person who is going to make my wedding—my day!—go off without a hitch—”

“Shouldn’t there be at least one hitch? At a wedding?” 

“Shut your snarky mouth for once in your life and apologize to Astrid so that she gets her head back in the game. I don’t care if you mean it, that’s not my problem anymore when I’m married and off to the Caribbean.”

“I—I don’t know,” Hiccup sighs, wiping his hand over his face and looking out his childhood window at the ever-drifting snow. The Christmas lights reflection in the glass is a cooler tone, LED, and when he thinks of Astrid trying to drag his dad into the twenty first century, the ball of guilt in his stomach feels like a fruitcake he swallowed whole. 

“And I don’t care, as long as you are at your house later for her Ugly Christmas Sweater party, and you apologize.” Snotlout hangs up before he can say anything else. 

Hiccup looks up how much it would cost to change his flights. 

He can afford it, financially, but he’s not sure his well of pride has that much left in it. 

He checks Facebook for the first time in eons, looks at pictures of Snotlout’s engagement last Christmas Eve, Eret on one knee in front of a huge, decorated tree at the town skating rink. He looks at his dad’s profile, the clumsy selfies with his reindeer. He looks at pictures of Astrid at Abby’s birthday, pictures of Astrid glaring at the camera while Snotlout documents her decorating cookies. Pictures of Astrid smiling with her family, her mittens curled around a cup of something hot. 

Looking at pictures of Astrid isn’t going to help him apologize to her. Not that he wants to, not that he even needs to, except for the way he brought up her brother. He wasn’t saying anything about her business, not really, he didn’t even know that she had a business. 

When he packed the shirt he got for the office Christmas party, it was a weak-willed moment of whimsy. Buying the shirt was a weak-willed moment of whimsy. Ugly sweaters are impractical in San Diego and he doesn’t get the trend of wearing intentionally ugly clothes, especially after a childhood in oversized, hand-me-down flannel, but the shirt was an alternative. 

He puts it on when his dad finally lets him come inside after a morning cleaning up the farm from the party the night before, hands fumbling over buttons holding the surfing Santa pattern together when he hears Astrid downstairs. She sounds like Berk too. It’s been years since he even thought about her voice but it’s a part of the place, like the snow and the small-town invasiveness. 

She runs into him at the bottom of the stairs, literally, face entirely eclipsed by two stacked plastic storage containers, and he fumbles for them with her, trying not to drop them even when one smacks him in the chin. 

“Thank you,” Astrid’s voice is business-like, but dismissive, and he recognizes the tone he uses when an employee gets him coffee without him having to ask. Then she takes a step to the side and sees him, and her eyes shut down like a mall battening down the hatches leading up to Black Friday. “What are you doing here?” 

“I live here?” He clears his throat, “I mean, I lived here so I’m staying here with my dad until the wedding.” 

“What are you wearing?” Her eyes flick down to his shirt and her lip curls slightly, not really interested enough to be a sneer. 

“I was told this is an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party.” 

“That’s not a sweater.” 

“It’s ugly,” he offers, trying not to notice when she nods, “and it has Santa on it.” 

“You aren’t invited.” She sets her containers down and starts unpacking them, bags of themed ornaments on the table. A container of cookies that she takes to the kitchen. 

“Look, Astrid—”

“I don’t have time for this.” She snaps, and he thinks his grandpa owned her sweater exactly. The ironed on felt Santa might be newer but the weave is familiar. “This week is…crucial if I’m going to get my business off the ground and I can’t let it be the Hiccup show because you decided that you remembered where your dad lives—”

“Harsh,” he wonders what Snotlout would really do to him if he ruined the wedding, “I didn’t know about your business, to be fair. And I didn’t mean to bring up your brother—it was just—seeing you after so long with a kid—”

“Snotlout said he told you to apologize, not to shove your foot even further into your mouth.” 

“I don’t need to be told to do that, I guess.” 

“I’m running late, I have to get this set up. It’s a party for the Berk Quilters Society and those old biddies…” She swears under her breath as she pulls out a long string of multicolor lights, “and Snotlout is supposed to be here but he’s off getting some sort of facial or something.” 

“A hydrofacial,” a British voice announces from the doorway and Astrid looks up gratefully at Eret, “he just told me that he ditched you. How can I help?” 

“Start stringing lights,” she tosses some decorations at him and narrows her eyes, “and if any old ladies start arriving early, distract them in the entry way. Flex all you need to.” 

“Astrid, I’m soon to be taken,” he shows her a tattooed line on his ring finger and she rolls her eyes. 

“If your soon to be husband doesn’t want me ordering you to flirt with old ladies to buy me time, he should be where he says he’s going to be.” 

“That checks out,” Eret agrees before quietly conscripting Hiccup into helping him decorate. That’s acceptable in a way that Astrid asking him herself isn’t, somehow, and within half an hour, the whole common area of the house looks like a Joann fabric’s Christmas display threw up all over it. 

In a good way. 

And Astrid is playing host, greeting everyone by name and asking after their grandkids and their sewing projects. Offering them cookies and punch from a festive candy cane printed pitcher. 

“Punch?” Eret distracts Hiccup from his moping in the corner with a cheery cup and Hiccup thanks him with a nod. “I’d let you get your own but Eunice over there is really distraught that no one took the time to knit you a proper sweater. She’s lying in wait with a measuring tape.” 

“Thanks for the rescue.” 

“She made Snotlout a hat last year and somehow made those measurements handsy.” 

Hiccup snorts, “noted.” It’s awkward, but at least a different brand of awkward than watching Astrid smile and joke and hold herself like someone he doesn’t recognize. And to think, he was hoping to avoid her until the wedding, but instead she’s planning parties at his house. “So, how’d you and Snotlout meet?” 

He leaves out the subsequent, obvious question as to why or how or…mostly how meeting Snotlout led to an engagement. 

“The story that we told his mother or the actual story?” Eret grins, waving at Astrid when she looks worried over at their corner, professional mask slipping for a second. 

“The truth, I don’t need to be any more confused.” Hiccup laughs and Astrid’s head snaps towards him at the sound, making him pause. When he waves, she ignores him, turning back to an old woman and smiling, mindlessly engaged in some story. 

“Snotlout was a Christmas party date for hire.” Eret waits for Hiccup to undergo the five stages of grief, one hand half in the air, the question he can’t quite form dying in his throat with a shrug. “For two hundred dollars, he agreed to be the Christmas date of my dreams.” 

“And that worked?” 

“It helped that my dream was for him to royally piss off my stuffy family, and he delivered.” Eret raises his glass in a quiet toast and Hiccup does the same, waiting to rediscover gravity, “now, two years later…here we are.” 

“What did you tell his mom?” 

“That we met fighting over the last leather jacket in _our_ size at the mall.” Eret smiles fondly, an expression that Hiccup can’t believe Snotlout could cause. 

“He’s an idiot. At least that hasn’t changed.” 

“It seems like nothing ever changes in this town,” Eret raises a questioning eyebrow and Hiccup catches himself staring at Astrid again, watching her adjust a novelty ball of yarn ornament on the banister. “Not in the last two years, at least.” 

“You’re right.” It’s Hiccup who’s different. 

“Did Snotlout invite you to our dual bachelor party tomorrow night? It’s at the new club out by the highway. _Snowglobes_ , very creative, should be…an absolutely embarrassing time.” 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but…I’ve been out of the loop.” 

“Never too late to jump back in,” Eret points towards the kitchen, “Snotlout was right about you needing to apologize, by the way.” 

“What? If I don’t, I’m uninvited from _Snowglobes_?” Hiccup jokes but Eret’s shrug is serious and as much as going to any bachelor party of Snotlout’s sounds like a unique level of hell, Eret is also the only person without a decade old vendetta against him. “Fine.” 

Astrid is in the kitchen, mini candy cane sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she takes a picture of an ornate plate of sweater cookies on a quilt that the club must have given her. She’s concentrating, little divot between her eyes. He suddenly feels so viscerally that he shouldn’t be here, that he’s intruding in some way, that he almost books the return ticket that he decided against earlier. 

“What do you want?” Astrid asks without looking up, candy cane moving to the other corner of her mouth. 

“My apology earlier was interrupted by the aforementioned foot in mouth moment.” 

“There was a planned apology?” She leans against the counter, candy cane in her hand, end of it honed to a festive weapon. He remembers one time in high school when she did that in class and managed to poke the inside of her cheek. It bled for half an hour and he couldn’t stop laughing between telling her that not everything has to be sharpened to the point of deadly. 

He hasn’t thought about that in years. 

“No, but Eret told me if I don’t, I’m uninvited from _Snowglobes_ tomorrow.” He wants it to be a joke and he doesn’t expect her to laugh, so the slight smile is a surprise. It’s a smile he doesn’t know, a reserved little twitch of her lips that makes her look more grown up than his stupid shiny shoes ever did. “I’m sorry about your brother. And I’m sorry for how I brought him up. And I’m sorry I didn’t call when it happened.” 

“I don’t know why you would have.” She shrugs, flippant and immature again, and it makes him feel better. 

He doesn’t say ‘because we used to be in love’. 

“And I didn’t know about your business. I didn’t get…how serious you are about it, I thought you were just helping out and probably convincing my dad that he can keep the tree farm as is, when it’s not—”

“Profitable. I know.” She nudges the kitchen rug with her toe, “it’s a dinosaur as a tree farm but…as a venue, for things like this, or in the summer if I convinced your dad into a tent out back by the creek…” She wipes her hands on her pants, face composed again, like she doesn’t know why she’s telling him this. 

He doesn’t remind her that she should because it’s his dad and his family farm and his last name is on the sign by the road. 

“What happens to the tree farm if he lets you run this place as a venue?” 

“Do I care?” She shrugs one shoulder, “no, it’s—your dad is letting me use the space for free, which is a godsend as I try to get a longer client list, but I’m starting to turn a profit and if he just let me make some modifications then the profit could carry the tree farm as long as he wants to limp it along.” 

“Wait,” Hiccup narrows his eyes, joking with her, “are you after my dad for his real estate?” 

“Is there any more punch?” Someone asks from the doorway and Hiccup recognizes the woman Eret had pointed out as Eunice, the handsy knitter. 

“Of course, Mrs. Johnson,” Astrid pulls another pitcher out of the fridge and heads back into the main room, right as the old woman gets a hand on Hiccup’s arm. 

“It’s a shame no one knitted you a proper sweater, young man, I won’t make Christmas but New Years—”

“It’s fine, really, I don’t need it back home.” He shrugs out of her grip, ignoring how ironic it is to talk about home being somewhere else while standing in his childhood kitchen. 

“Hiccup? Help me with the punch?” Astrid calls from the next room and he takes his opportunity, receiving the empty pitcher when she hands it to him. “Thought I’d save you from Eunice, Snotlout still won’t talk about the ‘emotional damage’ he sustained when she measured him for a hat.” 

“Does this mean that my apology is accepted?” He follows her mindlessly as she moves around the edges of the room, straightening pillows and picture frames, one of them holding the class picture from the year he got his braces. He speaks before he can think better of it. “What if I told you I want to help?” 

“I’d say that I don’t need your help.” Nothing in Berk has changed, least of all Astrid. 

“I mean with getting your business off the ground. If you’re making enough money using my childhood home as an event venue to support my dad’s tree farm, that sounds like it’s not my problem anymore.” He gestures at her with the pitcher and she looks at him, trying to find the lie, “I’m not some…big city stooge trying to get my dad to move to Boca, I just want to know he can afford to live. I gave up on him retiring long ago, I just—if anyone can pull this off, it’s you, so let me help.” 

“I’ll…” She bites her lip, exhaling sharply through her nose before her eyes flick at him like candy cane daggers, “that shirt is hideous, you should burn it.” 

“It was really cheap, I bet it would melt.” 

“I’ll let you know if there’s anything I want you to do.” She leaves it at that for a second before pointing back at the kitchen, “set the pitcher back in there.” 

If he thought she’d laugh, he’d salute or something, but he doesn’t think he’s that lucky. 


	4. Chapter 4

Hiccup’s rental car is formidable. A true soccer-mom mobile. Something that can get the imaginary kids to hockey practice, no matter the weather. 

He rolls down the window when he pulls up in front of Snotlout’s apartment and Astrid doesn’t look at him, because it’s not his car and it doesn’t even feel like it’s his him. 

“I know we were going to get an uber, but the weather…” He’s reasonable, like the DMV or a dentist appointment, and Astrid wishes she could avoid knowing his surprise when he sees her here.

She has a large suspicion that Snotlout only selected her as Best Maid for the photo Op. 

Specifically, the photo Op of her when some stripper is shaking their snowglobes at her and she’s full of twin reservoirs of embarrassment and rage. 

“Shotgun!” Eret calls before climbing into the front seat, thank god, even though it leaves her in the back with Snotlout and the photographer who just arrived from the city. 

“Gustav,” the man introduces himself when Astrid is pinned in the middle seat between him and Snotlout. Man is generous, he’s more of a kid, at least a few years younger than her with a patchy moustache like she had to talk Snotlout out of keeping. 

“Astrid.” 

“Bride to be?” He asks and she catches a flash of Hiccup’s green eyes in the rearview mirror as he merges into the lack of traffic. 

“Best Maid.” She clarifies and Snotlout rolls his eyes. 

“Yeah, dude, you could have looked at the sash.” He gestures at the satin sash across his chest, reading ‘same penis forever’ in pink cursive. 

“Oh,” Gustav frowns, “who’s the lucky guy?” 

“That would be me,” Eret clarifies, words slightly slurred from the shots he took to even attempt this embarrassing venture. 

They all really would do anything for Snotlout and maybe they should reconsider their priorities. 

That thought makes her look at Hiccup again, wondering why he’s here. He’s never shown Snotlout any great affection or preference or really any interest at all, which makes her think that he’s here for her and his offer of help rings in her head. She doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it, wouldn’t ask for it, but now that it feels like she has it, she doesn’t know what to do with it. 

“I just figured because of the girl’s voice on the phone,” Gustav’s knee bumps against Astrid’s and she stares straight ahead at the snow screen windshield, wishing she’d worn anything other than the cocktail dress leaving her legs exposed. 

Snotlout insisted it would be better. Less fabric to get stained by body oil. As if she’ll be getting anywhere near body oil. 

“Wedding planner and Best Maid,” Astrid clarifies, ignoring Gustav’s leading smile. 

Hiccup’s eyes flash in the rear view mirror again as he parks in front of _Snowglobes_ , and she follows Snotlout out of his side of the car, catching herself on the roof of the SUV when her heel slips slightly on the ice. Hiccup is wearing his shiny shoes again and she scowls, flashing her ID at the Christmas sweater clad bouncer and following Snotlout diligently into the club. 

It’s as bad as she thought it would be. Worse, maybe. The scantily clad man and woman on stage are both wearing Santa hats and grinding against stripper poles in vague tune with Jingle Bell Rock. She wishes Ruffnut were here, she’d be able to joke about this, at least. She’d make Astrid laugh by joking about jingling the male stripper’s bells, or even asking to do it outright, but there was no one around to babysit Abby tonight. 

Snotlout shoves a shot into her hand with a crow of his ‘same penis forever’ mantra and she takes it obediently, avoiding eye contact with the DJ as he switches the song to some techno remix of Silent Night. 

“Did anyone actually want a bisexual Christmas themed strip club in the middle of nowhere or did this just spawn here from some kind of glitch?” Hiccup asks Eret, voice a little too loud to be heard over the music and she doesn’t know how she feels about them hitting it off. 

“No one asked for this,” Eret shakes his head, gesturing at Snotlout in the front row shoving a dollar into the woman’s candy cane themed thong, “except maybe him.” 

“Is there going to be evidence of this?” Hiccup snorts, taking a slow sip of a beer she didn’t see him order. 

She didn’t know him when he was old enough to drink. There was one time when they were seventeen that her older brother gave them wine coolers leftover from some party and Hiccup was a lightweight, but he doesn’t look like that now, sleeves rolled up his forearms, hand she almost recognizes wrapped around a glass of some kind of stout. 

“Why do you think I brought the photographer?” Eret looks pointedly at Gustav, who’s looking around with eyes so wide and young that Astrid is momentarily shocked his ID got him in. 

“Right,” he starts snapping pictures with his Nikon D3500, asking for the group to assemble by the stage. He gets in one group shot before a bouncer is tapping him on the shoulder and pointing at the ‘no photography’ sign on the wall. “Guess I’m just here to enjoy the party then,” he shrugs as he puts his camera away, sliding a little too close to Astrid at their standing table near the stage. 

An alarm goes off as the Christmas lights strung across the top of the stage start to twinkle aggressively and the DJ rings a bell hung above his setup. 

“Eight o’clock, when all good little boys and girls are in bed…” He trails off as the opening lyrics to ‘I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ pour out of the speakers. The strippers hop down off of the stage, both under separate spotlights as they produce sprigs of mistletoe from imaginary pockets, dangling them over a couple in the front row. “Twenty-five percent off buffet coupons are on the table for anyone who kisses their own sexy Santa under the mistletoe tonight, folks.” 

“I could eat,” Gustav nudges Astrid with a pointy elbow and she tugs her skirt down, wishing she’d ignored the warnings of body oil. 

The male stripper is making his way towards them and she’s about to excuse herself to the bathroom or outside or to purgatory to escape the spot-lit awkwardness coming her way when someone grabs her elbow, turning her gently towards them. 

It’s Hiccup, of course, even though he was just on the far side of the table, chatting with Eret about work, and he’s looking at her apologetically. Helpfully, even. He leans in far enough that he doesn’t have to shout and she doubts anyone else can hear his voice over the Jackson 5 soundtrack to her nightmare. 

“You saved me from a handsy knitter, I figure I owe saving you from a pubescent photographer.” 

“You’re right,” she nods, “you do owe me.” 

His smile is awkward and hopeful and it strikes her how absurd it is to be here with him after all this time and distance and hours better spent. For a second, it looks like his attempt to save her is for nothing and that the mistletoe toting man with the family baubles barely concealed in a banana hammock is going to skip their table entirely, but then Snotlout whistles between his fingers. 

“We’ve got a bachelor party over here!” 

Astrid glares at him, but he doesn’t notice, given that he’s enthusiastically diving into Eret’s arms as soon as the spotlight is on them and the mistletoe is danging above their heads. Some people hoot and holler and Astrid wants to melt into the floor when the stripper looks her way. 

The question isn’t so much weather to lean away from Gustav when he taps her on the shoulder, it’s to lean into Hiccup because he knew her well enough once to know how much she needs to be held back right now. If she’s in jail for assaulting a stripper, the Manor Christmas party will flop and she won’t have material for her website. If she’s in jail for assaulting a photographer, there won’t be anyone to take wedding pictures, and she won’t have anything for the wedding package advertisement. 

Hiccup’s hand curls harmlessly, protectively around her arm when the spotlight lands on them and the mistletoe moves above their head, the stripper gyrating next to her, body oil smearing on the edge of her skirt. 

“We uh, already ate,” Hiccup tries to dismiss the guy, but it doesn’t work and the spotlight makes her eyes water. 

“Looks like they’re shy, folks, let’s give them some encouragement!” 

Astrid wonders how there are so many people at a bisexual, Christmas-themed strip club in the middle of nowhere to cheer at a deafening volume. 

Hiccup waves the guy off and he takes a step sideways, gyrating towards Hiccup now. Hiccup smiles, awkward and red-faced, his hand on her arm sweating through her sleeve. 

“Twenty-five sweet percent off on the buffet is at stake here,” the DJ reminds, ever helpful, “get yourself some figgy pudding.” 

“That’s a horrible pun.” Hiccup tries to turn the situation into an argument about puns, and she appreciates him so much in the instant that it feels like a personal betrayal, even as the spotlight starts strobing red and green. “No, I expected better material at a Christmas Themed Berk strip club—”

She tells herself that it’s the bright light making her face too hot as she leans in and presses chaste lips to his cheek. 

“That’s not a real kiss!” The DJ crows and Astrid flips him off. “Come on, it’s just a joke! We’re just having some fun!” 

She may or may not tell him where he can stick his fun. 

The bouncer taps on Hiccup’s shoulder and asks if there’s a problem. 

“No problem,” he looks at Snotlout for a second and then back at Astrid, “we’re just going outside for a smoke.” 

She doesn’t protest when he grabs her hand and leads her out the door into the snowy parking lot. 

“You smoke?” She asks wiping her hand on her hip when he lets it go, before crossing her arms against the cold and taking a step back. 

It only hits her that she’s asking about him when he answers. 

“No,” he runs a hand through his hair, disturbing his stupid haircut and sending errant stands flicking out from his head, “it just seemed like an excuse to flee that no one would question.” 

“Fleeing without your coat,” she shivers, goosebumps breaking out across her legs as she looks anywhere but at his embarrassed face. “You really forgot about winter, didn’t you?” 

Another question. 

She swore to herself that she wouldn’t ask about him. The second she got his RSVP and she started thinking about what it might be like to see him, she swore that she didn’t want to know anything. She doesn’t care about his job or his life or anyone that might be in it. She doesn’t care that he didn’t use his plus one. She doesn’t care that he drinks stout and tries to rescue her from awkward situations. 

She doesn’t care that she kissed his cheek and that it felt different than it used to. Harder and more angled. 

She doesn’t care that he looks down at her bare legs with a tense, awkward expression. 

“Right, you’re probably cold.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“I can go back in and grab your coat—”

“We should go back in,” she shakes her head, putting the back of her cold hand against her forehead and biting her lip. She wants Hiccup’s eyes on her to be offensive, but the to-do list in her brain is creeping up against that stupid offer to help and there’s a body oil stain on his dark jeans and she holds out her hand. “I—Truce?” 

“Truce?” He stares at her hand like it’s strip club mistletoe. 

“I—I think getting along is our only chance of survival at this point.” 

His smile is slow spreading and real and his hand is still warm when he shakes hers, fingers curling farther than she remembers. 

“You were planning to survive? I didn’t know that was an option.” 

“Yeah, it was on the invitation between chicken and fish.” 

“Oh, I got the steak.” He laughs, low in his throat, the kind of private sound she wouldn’t hear if not for the silence of slow falling snow or the pause between songs. “Sounds like that particular brand of torture is over, should we go back in before a leg freezes off?” 

“Probably.” She nods, letting him go first so she doesn’t have to think about him following after her. 


	5. Chapter 5

Hiccup wakes up to an e-mail from Astrid inviting him to the secret Santa pool for the gift exchange planned at Snotlout’s rehearsal dinner on Christmas Eve. It’s last minute, literally, he gets the invitation ten minutes before nine and the randomly assigned recipient message goes out at nine on the dot. 

Of course, he gets Astrid. 

Because he wasn’t thinking of her constantly enough already, apparently. 

Whoever invented the entire mistletoe tradition was obviously a sadist, but whoever decided it should enter the public domain and be used as entertainment in a rural stripclub is beyond description. Hiccup does not want to see that guy’s basement. 

But it still got Astrid to kiss him. 

And more importantly, it got her to suggest a truce, whatever that means. It’s not accepting his help, which he still wishes she would, especially because it means removing worrying about his dad’s livelihood from his list of commitments, but it’s something. Maybe she’ll look at him without those steel bars over her expression. He’s could kid himself and say he’s not sure why he wants that, but then he thinks of her in that dress. 

It’s Berk, in December, and it was obviously one of Snotlout’s demands, given that he hasn’t seen her in a dress since prom and that one had a longer skirt. 

He doesn’t know why he’s acting like this, he’s always known Astrid was beautiful. He knew she was beautiful before she knew he was alive, and when nothing else in Berk has changed, why would that? 

She has changed though. She’s prettier, more guarded, sharper. Less embarrassed to kiss his cheek in a strip club and curse at the DJ than she was to kiss his cheek on his porch more than a decade ago. 

She asks him to help her set up for the big town Christmas party at the last minute, accepting his offer for help and asking him to haul the twelve-foot tree in from the porch. He wants to ask why she doesn’t do it herself, she’s obviously stronger than him, or if this counts as her secret Santa present, but he doesn’t. He puts on his high school coat that he’s pleased to feel is a little tight in the shoulders and goes out onto the porch to pull the tree in through the front door and to the stand Astrid must have left, because it’s labeled ‘Haddock Manor Party’ in clear black text that must have been printed by a label maker. 

He starts wrestling it upright and then he sees her. 

She’s hurrying down the stairs in a full-length blue dress that shows her shoulders, struggling with a necklace and assessing the tree for damage, and he almost drops all twelve feet of it on his useless, speechless self. 

“About got it?” She asks, giving up on the necklace and reaching to brace the tree. She’s wearing perfume, something citrus and musk and he swallows hard, pine needles biting into his palm. 

“Sure, uh, yeah—”

“I’ll anchor it,” she bends down and messes with the tree stand and he tries to compose himself. 

He interacts with plenty of pretty women. Sometimes they wear pretty dresses. He does this all the time. 

“Thanks.” He swallows. “I mean you’re welcome.” 

“I thought you wanted to help.” She stands up when the tree is secure and he doesn’t look. He waits until she’s fully upright to notice her collarbone, the freckles on her shoulder, the absolute disinterest in her expression. Verging on panic, really, and he remembers what it was like just getting started. 

“I do. It looks great.” He wipes his hands on his pants and tries not to look at her. The way the dress’s sheen clings to her hip, the way her hair shines in its careful curls. He tries not to realize that she was in some part getting ready upstairs. 

“It’s not decorated.” 

“Let me help,” he says, and it’s open ended, even if she doesn’t know it. 

“Ok,” she tucks a curl behind her ear and even her wrist looks elegant and he nods, “decorations are here.” 

It’s mostly glass balls, the theme seems to be red and gold. She takes one half of the tree while he takes the other. Her hand brushes his somewhere near the top and she coughs, almost dropping the blown glass angel. 

“Sorry.” 

“No, it’s—”

“Here,” she places her own decoration, her wrist dragging along his. “Covered.” The pause lingers like her touch doesn’t and his throat feels dry. “Looks good.” 

It’s not a compliment. She doesn’t even really acquiesce. It’s a fact and he realizes all at once how much he’s missed that about her, the way she imposes fact and truth onto chaos. 

“Yeah.” He looks up at the tree and then at her and she’s closer than he remembers, shoulder brushing his coat, face in the same fir that his is. 

If he moves, it’s muscle memory. 

If he moves, it’s because she’s beautiful and even though he expected that, it’s still a punch to the chest. 

When he moves, it’s cut off by her phone ringing. 

“Shit,” she flinches away, scrambling for her phone and finding it on the coffee table. “Hey…yeah, ok—no, I’m setting up for the party—she can’t—fuck. God. You’re really going to guilt me with that now? You’re wasting your tokens, Ruff…Yes, that’s a spend once…Fine. Fine.” She looks at him almost apologetically and continues sincerely, “I’ll be there. Yes, I’ll be there. Get here when you can. Ok. Love you. Yeah. Sure. Bye.” 

“What is it?” Hiccup asks, knowing the answer isn’t one he’ll like. 

“Ruff can’t make it to Abby’s holiday recital,” she bites her lip, assessing the tree from a clinical distance as she pulls a long coat on over her dress. “Weather.” 

“So you’re going?” He looks out the front window at the fast falling snow and speaks before thinking, “I’ll drive.” 

“I can drive.”

“I didn’t—if it’s weather, I’ve got my rental.” He gestures at his SUV next to her Honda and she purses her lips. She might be wearing lipstick and he resists the urge to lick his lips. “What school?” 

“Berk elementary,” she says, buttoning her jacket, and pausing, “you don’t want to sit through some third grade Christmas recital.” 

“It’s fine,” he shrugs, zipping his own jacket, “I love a nativity clumsily shouted by children.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says without anything behind it and he pulls his keys out of his pocket. 

“Ok, so I’m just going to an collaboration of eight year olds’ rendition of A Christmas Story by myslelf—”

“I’m in a hurry,” she waves him along after her, dress sweeping through the snow. 

She gives directions to both of their old elementary school, fidgeting with something in her pocket as they park in the snowy lot. She’s overdressed in the crowd of parents coming from work and the rare older sibling, and she fusses with her hair and her dress, fidgeting in a way that she never has. 

“Shit,” she swears on the way to the auditorium doors, spinning suddenly towards Hiccup and ducking her head. 

“What?” 

“Throk,” she mutters inexplicably, fidgeting with her hair again and looking over her shoulder at a man with ginger hair and a searching expression. 

“Is that a name?” Hiccup half whispers, looking around the hallway that always seemed taller when he was five. 

“Throk,” she points with a casual thumb and a nervous expression, tugging at her dress and drawing Hiccup’s attention to the collarbone barely visible against the collar of her coat. “He’s one of the dad’s in Abby’s class. Or not in her class, he’s one of her friend’s dad’s.” She fumbles over the words, edging a little closer to him even as the auditorium dims and the first few notes of Christmas music start. 

“And you have something against dads?” 

“Astrid!” The guy who is apparently named some sound approximating ‘Throk’ greets Astrid with a not-so-surprising level of glee and she grabs Hiccup’s hand with a very surprising amount of force. 

“Just play along,” she hisses out of the corner of her mouth, swinging their hands with a white knuckled grip. “Please.” 

“Astrid, I was hoping you’d be here,” Throk goes for a hug, maybe, stopping short when he sees Hiccup. There’s recognition there, maybe, and Hiccup thinks he might know the guy from high school or something. A few years older or maybe he went to Outcast high, and his hand is locked with Astrid’s and he thinks his heart might beat out of his chest. “Who’s this?” 

“Hiccup Haddock,” she says like it won’t start talk that spreads faster than flu and he feels like his fingers are going to fall off. 

“Hiccup Haddock,” Throk repeats before offering a stiff handshake that Hiccup is forced to reciprocate with his left hand because Astrid won’t let go. “Nice to meet you.” 

“Likewise.” 

Astrid nods him on, fidgeting with her dress again. 

“And you are?” 

Hiccup has a lot of answers to the question ‘who are you?’ 

He’s the first and only Haddock son. He’s a tenant at his apartment building and an employee at his company and someone who doesn’t fit in in Berk. He’s an amputee and he hates Christmas and the two aren’t related. 

“My boyfriend.” Astrid fills in after an awkwardly long pause and Hiccup freezes for a second before nodding dumbly when she squeezes his hand like she’s intending on extruding whatever’s in it. 

At one point, that was a word for it. 

“Your boyfriend.” Throk frowns, “I thought you were too busy—”

“I am,” Astrid nods, looking at Hiccup with ‘help’ in her eyes. “Or that’s what I said, because it’s true—”

“Long distance,” he blurts, “that’s why it works. I’m down in San Diego most of the time—”

“Right! Yes,” she pats his shoulder, pointy chin digging into it as she halfway hides behind him, “long-distance is really working for us. It’s great, gives me lots of space and—I think it’s time to take our seats. Babe. I want Abby to see me before the lights go down—”

“Could Ruffnut not make it?” Throk asks even as Astrid starts dragging Hiccup towards the auditorium doors. He can’t believe he almost forgot how strong she is, but he definitely remembers when she yanks on his hand. 

“Weather,” Astrid shrugs, ducking down a row near the front and putting Hiccup between her and Throk, who lingers. 

“Tim’s on left.” He gestures at the other side of the auditorium and Astrid grabs Hiccup’s arm, pulling it securely over her shoulders. Bare shoulders, when she shrugs out of her coat to get comfortable in the warm auditorium. 

“Abby’s on the right, so, I’ll talk to you later.” She waves him off, grumbling under her breath the second he’s out of earshot, “if I can’t avoid it.” 

“Well he’s umm…persistent,” Hiccup tries to lean away from her but she holds his hand in place, sinking down in her seat, hair pooling against his sleeve. 

“He is, if you could just—until the lights go down.” Her cheeks flare bright red, making the dark glitter on her eyelids stand out more as the lights start to dim. “You said you’d help.” 

“I thought I meant like, distributing business cards…” He clears his throat when Abby walks onto the stage in a sparkly red and green dress. She sees Astrid and waves a shy little hip height wave that Astrid responds enthusiastically to, “not pretending to be your long-distance boyfriend so that some dad doesn’t hit on you—”

“Please,” she hisses through a gritted teeth smile, tucking herself diligently into his side as Throk stands up to cheer for his son. 

“Why don’t you just tell him to leave you alone?” He whispers and Astrid glances at him with a rare kind of desperation. 

“You think I haven’t tried that?” She leans a little closer to whisper in his ear when the children start singing. “Look it’s—I don’t have to tell you this.” 

“You know, my dad’s going to hear about this,” he squeezes her shoulder, trying not to think about how good she feels under his arm or how good she smells or how close they are, “and get his hopes up, and then have a heart attack when I tell him it was fake because you didn’t want to tell someone to leave you alone.” 

“He wouldn’t believe you.” She scowls. “He won’t hear about it.” But she moves an inch away from him, shrugging his arm off like she’s worried about hurting his feelings. The first song ends and she claps, waving furiously when Abby looks for her. “Last year—Throk was new in town and at the Christmas party—it was my first big party and well, I thought it was just a one-night stand but he seemed to think it was the start of his very own Hallmark Christmas movie, or something.” 

“Oh.” Hiccup wishes he hadn’t asked. 

“You were the one who wouldn’t drop it.” 

“I know.” 

They sit, stiff and silent through the rendition of the history of Berk’s Christmas tradition by bumbling second graders, until Astrid leans her elbow on the armrest between them, head on her hand. 

“Thank you,” she mumbles, “I won’t tell your dad. I’ll…tell Throk—”

“It’s ok.” He ignores the way his hand itches to touch her when she pulls her hair to the side, revealing a tangled necklace clasp at the nape of her neck. “It’s not a lie, just a decade late.” 

Again, maybe being her fake long-distance boyfriend could be her secret Santa gift. 

Then again, he’ll be gone and she’ll have to deal with the rumors, either way. He can feel people looking at them, his homecoming causing quiet ripples through the bored auditorium of parents. 

“Abby’s solo is coming up,” Astrid explains as she gets her phone out, filming the little girl as she sings her verse in the twelve days of Christmas, dancing across the stage and grinning Astrid’s direction at the end of it. She gives her a thumbs up and checks the time, anxiously tapping her foot through the rest of the performances. 

Abby bounds off of the stage as soon as the lights come back up and Astrid is on her feet, fussing over her performance and herding her towards the car. Throk waves and Hiccup likes waving back a little too much, something uncomfortably possessive blooming in his throat. Like part of him wants to deal with the rumors. 


	6. Chapter 6

“So, tell me Gruff, if you weren’t spending this snowy Berk night bringing the joy of Christmas to our listeners, what would you be doing?” 

“Well, Tuff, I reckon I’d be calling the boys down at the illegal poker room under the Chinese restaurant on Fourth—”

“Well, Gruff,” Tuff laughs through the radio in the kitchen’s speakers, “I, personally, would be at the Berk Christmas Council’s annual Christmas party that’s currently going on at the Haddock manor, not ratting out Mrs. Wu.” 

“That party could be fun too,” Gruff whispers, “that’s what you wrote on the script you gave me. You also promised me twenty dollars, do I get that now or later?” 

“Later,” Tuffnut grunts before announcing a return to Christmas music and playing some cover version of Jingle Bells that Astrid doesn’t recognize. 

She turns off the radio with a sigh, staring out the Haddock Manor kitchen window for another second before steeling herself to go back to the party. 

It’s going well. That’s not the problem. She doesn’t even think there is a problem, not really, not in the grand scheme of things. It’s just a big night, in general, and as much as she doesn’t mind helping out with Abby, it interrupted the flow of things, and she’s felt like she’s been rushing ever since she got back. 

Stoick let the caterers in and the canapes were all set up by the time she and Hiccup got back with Abby. And then he had to go change out of his Christmas Tree wrangling clothes, like he’d accepted an invitation she hadn’t given him, but it got him out of her hair to finish setting up. 

And then hundreds of people were streaming through, introducing her to grandchildren and cousins from out of town, asking about the manor and any planned renovations. And Snotlout was late, not that he’s brilliant at the hosting anyway, and before she knew it, the party was in full, loud, flawless swing. 

That’s when she escaped to the kitchen. Just long enough to check in on the fundraiser and whether Tuffnut has managed to say anything about it. If she proves she can throw a party that raise money for the Berk County Children’s Hospital, someone else will surely want her to do the same for them, and this should all start self-perpetuating. It has to, because she can’t keep shoving this rock uphill by herself, indefinitely. 

By herself, she snorts, straightening the magnets on the modern fridge and trying not to think of Hiccup’s offer to help or how she might have accepted it. She knows that’s not what he meant, it’s just that Throk was the absolute last thing she needed to think about tonight. It still is, just how worrying about Hiccup is the last thing she needs added to her plate this week. 

“Fantastic job!” Stoick’s booming voice greets her as soon as she steps back out of the kitchen, and she forces herself to smile at the compliment, even though it feels like a drop of water in an ever-draining bucket. “This place looks amazing! Almost as amazing as you.” 

“Thank you,” she accepts it absently, nodding at the buffet set up on the long, formal dining room table, “can I get you anything?” 

“I’m great,” he gestures at her with a half full mug of spiced wine which must be adding the jolly tone to his cheeks. Everyone else is dressed up, but he looks right at home in his chunky knit sweater and corduroy pants and it’s charming somehow, instead of glaring, like the party is integrating itself with him and not the other way around. “I did hear from Hiccup that Ruffnut is looking for you, she just got here.” 

“Right,” she shakes her head, trying not to react to Hiccup’s name, “I’ll go find her.” 

“Hiccup’s over by the record player, or he was a minute ago, he might be able to point you in her direction.” Stoick’s grin is loaded like a tin of Christmas cookies from grandma and Astrid pretends not to notice. “It’s so good to see you two getting along, after all this time.” 

“I don’t think we really have a choice,” she paraphrases her truce, “if we’re going to survive the wedding.” 

“Still, you two used to be so good together.” It’s fatherly in the way that has always come so naturally to Stoick and Astrid nods, pulling her phone out as an excuse. 

“I really should go find Ruffnut, I have the sacred holiday recital video that she hasn’t had a chance to see yet.” 

“Ask Hiccup!” Stoick prompts again, maybe a little too jolly, and she scans the crowd for Ruffnut. 

She sees Snotlout, being gracious in the corner, showing an older lady his engagement ring and talking about the wedding. Fishlegs is browsing the bookshelf in the den, talking to the bank manager from town. Abby is at a table with some other kids, fancy recital hairdo half undone, frosting smeared around her mouth. 

Hiccup is at the record player and he nods in her direction when she looks at him. 

The stupid haircut is back in its proper place, but he’s wearing a suit that somehow makes it look less foreign. He’s comfortable in it, shoulders filling out the jacket more than she would have guessed, green tie bringing out his eyes. He’s another stranger she doesn’t want to recognize and she wishes she didn’t know how normal it felt to grab his hand and to ask him for things she shouldn’t.

“Hey,” he greets, a little stilted when she walks up to him, like he wants to announce something but isn’t quite sure what, and she crosses her arms. 

“Your dad said Ruff was looking for me?” 

“I haven’t seen her,” he frowns, glancing above her head like he can’t or won’t quite meet her eyes and she tries not to care when it makes her blush. 

“Right.” She sighs. Of course Stoick sent her this way. “Well, if you do, I’m looking for her, so…” She starts to leave but he stops her with a tentative outstretched hand, frowning slightly. 

“Do you know where you’re standing?” 

“By the record player?” She takes a step back and he points up with one long finger. It’s a bundle of green hanging from a red ribbon on the ceiling joist right above her head. Their heads. “I didn’t hang that there.” 

“I didn’t say you did, I just—and considering no one is chanting at us this time—”

“I’ll just go find—”

“What’s going on here?” Ruffnut’s voice cuts the tension and Astrid is surprised to find herself irritated at the interruption. Or not the interruption itself, but the timing of it, the tone of it, the way it makes her feel caught, like she’s doing something wrong. 

“I’m looking for you,” Astrid steps back from Hiccup and he does the same tripping over a fold in the rug and catching himself on the wall. “I have a video of Abby’s solo.” 

“Send it to me, you look busy.” 

“I’d rather just show it to you,” she glares at Ruffnut’s opportunistic expression, especially considering the events of the evening. “Follow me to the kitchen?” 

“Nothing you have to take care of here first?” Her grin only widens when she looks at Hiccup more directly, “long time no see, Haddock. Sorry to interrupt.”

“You weren’t,” Astrid assures her, heading back to the kitchen and preparing her talking points on the way. Snotlout is washing something out at the sink and he tries to leave after seeing hers and Ruffnut’s faces but she points him towards a stool. “Sit, I might need a witness.” 

“I catch people standing in tense silence under the mistletoe, I assume things, what’s so weird about that?” She wiggles eyebrows at Astrid and Snotlout pauses, hands still covered in soap. 

“Who was under the mistletoe?” 

“Just Astrid and Hiccup.” 

“No,” Snotlout rinses his hands and goes to dry them on his slacks before thinking better and rummaging around for a towel, “no, tell me I’m not hearing this. It is three days before my wedding—”

“What does mistletoe have to do with your wedding?” Ruffnut snorts, “do you need to install it over the altar so that Eret will kiss you?” 

“At first it was hilarious watching Hiccup make a fool of himself while you look hot,” Snotlout ignores Astrid’s protest, “but not this week. This is not time for the patented, Hiccstrid ‘will-they-won’t-they’ dance. You have a job to do—”

“Ok, now Ruffnut, I need a witness,” Astrid takes a step towards him and he gestures emphatically at his face. 

“Yeah, you’re going to hit me? To ruin the face of your brand’s first wedding?” He waits for her to stop moving before crossing his arms, “thought so.” 

“Eret can be the face,” Ruffnut suggests with a shrug, impervious to Snotlout’s glare. “Just saying.” She nibbles on her pinky nail, looking at Astrid out of the corner of her eye, “I’m also just saying that Throk texted me that he saw you with your _boyfriend_ at the recital—”

“Fuck,” Astrid slumps onto her elbows on the counter, “can anyone in this town mind their own business?” 

“Not when it’s as juicy as you introducing Hiccup Haddock as your boyfriend, for some reason, because if he were your boyfriend, there’s no way you would have been that tense to encounter mistletoe.” Ruffnut pushes away from the counter, “unless I got some bad information, I’ll just take that video and go…” 

“No, it’s…” Astrid shakes her head, because maybe she does need to talk about this, about Hiccup and the truce and the way she wasn’t even supposed to see him until the wedding and now he’s everywhere, offering his help and fitting almost seamlessly back into the hole he never wanted to occupy. “Why’d you have to set me up with Throk in the first place?” 

“He was hot, and just because I have too much baggage to date right now doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.” She shrugs, delivering her stock answer and then pausing, a little sympathetic. “To be fair, if I knew he was going to follow you around like a puppy for a year after you hooked up one time, I wouldn’t have suggested it.” 

“Throk is hot,” Snotlout pitches in his two cents, “if Astrid wants a Christmas romance—”

“I don’t.” 

“Ok, if you want some Christmas dick, why don’t you just go with Throk?” He gestures at the other room. “Throk has zero chance of stealing my thunder—”

“What thunder?” Ruffnut snorts and Astrid looks between the two of them, wondering who she trusts least. “Plus, Hiccup was filling out that suit, I don’t know if you noticed—”

“Ruff!” She hisses and Snotlout nods along until she glares at him too.

“What? Just because my husband is dead and I’m a single mom trying not to mess up my kid, I can’t look at Hiccup’s miraculous ass coming home for Christmas?” Ruffnut says it with only part of her usual joking tone and Astrid sighs. 

“I know this time of year is hard for you.” 

“It’s hard for everyone.” There’s sympathy there and a check-in that Astrid doesn’t want. “Your control issues go bonkers, Snotlout gains five pounds of cookie weight.” 

“I am down seven pounds for the wedding, actually, at this rate, if Astrid doesn’t keep trying to give me an aneurysm by resurrecting her love life at my rehearsal dinner—”

“I’m not,” Astrid insists, “all I’m doing is planning your entire wedding while you get facials and show up late to everything.” 

“As I was saying,” Snotlout exhales pointedly, “I’m going to have to find an emergency tailor on Christmas morning.” 

“If Berk had a Chinatown, I’d say it’s a good bet,” Hiccup appears in the doorway and Astrid jumps. 

“How much did you hear?” 

“I came in somewhere around the time Astrid reminded you that she’s planning our entire wedding,” Eret looks over Hiccup’s shoulder, “which, thank you Astrid. Again. If it’s anything like this party, it’s going to be great.” 

“It’s no problem,” she insists, reading from the clipboard of professional sayings taped over the panic in her brain. “Speaking of the party, I’ve got to get back to it.” 

Eret and Hiccup step aside for her to walk back into the living room, and when someone grabs her elbow to stop her, she hates that she expects Hiccup to be asking what’s wrong, like none of the last ten years ever happened. Instead, though, it’s Ruffnut, face surprisingly sincere as she pulls Astrid towards the drink table and picks up a flute of champagne. 

She chugs it. 

“I’m not good at this,” she sighs, and Astrid hates how she doesn’t remember the last time Ruff didn’t look tired, “and I know I already played the dead husband card once tonight—”

“You didn’t have to,” Astrid tucks a slightly deflated curl behind her ear, “you can look at Hiccup all you want, if it helps—I don’t care either way.” 

“I just want to say…you—you never know how much time you have with someone,” Ruffnut’s voice is too soft as she rests her hands on Astrid’s shoulders and not for the first time, Astrid wonders how hard it is to be her friend when she has her brother’s eyes. “You can’t get it back, and if there’s even a chance it’s important, you shouldn’t waste it.” 

“We ran out of time ten years ago, Ruff.” Astrid counted months when she got the RSVP, wondering where they’d gone and why they suddenly all felt like no time at all. Like a blink and suddenly the calendar was saying a decade had passed. 

A long, eventful blink that she had thought had dragged her away from any connection to him at all. 

“No,” Ruffnut’s smile is sad and she touches the wedding ring on a chain around her neck, “you didn’t.” 

It’s after midnight when the party slows down. Ruffnut asks for help transporting a snoring Abby from the couch in the den out to her car and Astrid is shocked when Hiccup volunteers, loosening his tie before scooping the little girl into his arms. Astrid helps usher out the last few guests, calling a ride for the butcher who’s stumbling over his feet and slipping her business card to a couple talking about getting married in the spring. She waves off Snotlout’s offer to help clean and tells him to get his beauty sleep, and surprisingly he takes almost as much effort to get rid of as Stoick does. 

Stoick won’t go to bed until she lets him fetch a few containers from her car, and even then, he hovers in the doorway, asking if he should do dishes. 

She wants to scream that she wants to be alone, but instead she shakes her head with her most professional smile locked in place, telling him it’s part of the fee. 

The professional cleaning crew is coming tomorrow to spruce up the lower floor of the manor for the wedding, so she mostly focuses on decluttering and picking up ornaments that don’t go with Eret and Snotlout’s Winter Wonderland theme. She’s reaching for that sprig of mistletoe that she definitely didn’t place when a shadow in the doorway spooks her and she almost drops her box when she jumps. 

“Sorry,” Hiccup says politely, nothing else behind it, and she doesn’t think of Ruffnut. She doesn’t think of anything other than how badly she wants to go home and sleep. 

“I figured you’d gone up to bed.” 

“Not tired,” he lies, yawning as he rubs the back of his neck, “look, Astrid—”

“You don’t—I’m sorry about earier, ok? I’ll talk to Throk, he’s already spreading the _news_ ,” she tries to make it sound ridiculous and Hiccup watches her like she’s made of moving parts he’s trying to figure out. Like he understands the components but not the assembly and if she’s not careful, he’ll start taking her apart. 

“Hey, I don’t have to deal with the fallout.” He laughs a whisper of a laugh, “but no, that’s not what I was coming to talk to you about.” 

“Oh?” She cocks her head, half full box of ornaments on her hip. 

“I—I’m sorry for not taking you seriously, at first. For saying that you were trying to pull one over on my dad—”

“You didn’t know.” 

“I didn’t ask.” There might be stubble under his jaw as he adjusts his loosened tie, but the dim candlelight in the room makes it hard to tell. “But this was…amazing. And you look…” He starts but then seems to think better of it and her face burns, “and if you’re willing to help my dad with it, I’m beyond grateful.” 

The last scrap of Astrid’s trust in sincerity died with her brother and she narrows her eyes, waiting for the catch. 

“So, unless you need any help—”

“I don’t.” 

“I think I’ll head to bed,” he waits for her to nod before taking an awkward backwards step towards the kitchen instead of the stairs. 

“Why are you going that way?” She asks another question, just how she swore she wouldn’t, just how she can’t stop doing and he raises an eyebrow. 

“Do you know where you’re standing?” He points at the mistletoe above her head, “I’m not falling for that again.” 

“I can’t reach it,” she admits, a little terse, demonstrating that she can’t reach high enough to pull the ribbon off of its hook, and he looks at her not quite skeptically. Skeptical that she’s telling the truth, but open to a wide away of reasons. “I can’t jump in this dress, if you could just…”

“Save any other unsuspecting passerby from the trap?” He steps towards her, pausing just under the mistletoe and looking up, fingers scraping over a barely stubbled chin. “Since a frost giant put it up there…” 

“I’m worried that’s exactly what happened,” she mutters under her breath, thinking of his worry about his dad learning about their charade at the recital. 

“What?” He cocks his head at her, eyes bright in the candlelight. 

“Nothing.” 

“I can’t reach, I think I have to go find a step stool, or something, unless you know where one is—”

“What if you picked me up?” She offers, face on fire when he looks down at her dress for what feels like the millionth time tonight, “I just want to get this over with and get home. And I need that for the skating rink fundraiser tomorrow—”

“Sure,” he doesn’t seem to have much use for her excuses. Reasons. “If you trust me to not drop you.” 

He’s turning the situation around to make some joke about himself and for once, she’s grateful, especially as she nods and he wraps his arms around her waist, bending his knees to lift her the careful six or so inches she needs to barely flick the ribbon off of its hook. She fumbles, dropping the mistletoe on the ground and he lets her down more slowly than she expected, their chests pressed together as her feet touch the floor, his hands lingering on her back. 

“Good thing you dropped it,” he whispers before letting her go, leaving hot streaks across her skin under her dress, “if you hadn’t…well…”

“I did.” She smooths her skirt as she bends down to pick up the offensive fake foliage, “crisis averted.” 

“Yeah. Good.” He clears his throat and it’s the middle of the night, and everyone else is asleep, “crisis averted.” 

“Goodnight, Hiccup.” 

“Yeah, goodnight.” 


	7. Chapter 7

“How do I look, son?” Hiccup’s dad stops him in the entry way, halfway through putting on a well-worn red coat that matches his pants. 

“Like if Santa Claus was an NFL linebacker,” he tries not to think too hard about the fact that the outfit makes his dad’s beard look whiter somehow. 

“Volunteered to be Santa at Astrid’s event today,” he grins, “those imposters from the agency overcharge, and it’s for a good cause.” 

Astrid. Her event. Another event. God, when will the events be over? 

“Oh. Cool.” 

“You should come.” 

It is two days before the rehearsal dinner and imminent secret Santa present exchange, three days before the wedding, the morning of the Ice Skating Fundraiser, and most importantly, ten hours since Hiccup held Astrid in his arms to help her take down the plastic foliage that he is now thinking of as his mistlefoe, and he has no idea what to get her. There’s a twenty-dollar price limit in the e-mail assigning his secret Santa recipient to him, and he doesn’t know how strict it is or even what she could possibly want. 

“I’m kind of busy.” 

“Doing what?” 

“I think I’ve got to go be inside for a while.” He’s planning to head into the city for a couple of hours to skulk around the mall. “All this clean Berk air is making my head a little too clear.” 

“Nonsense.” 

“Honestly…Astrid invited me to the secret Santa pool for the rehearsal dinner last minute and I don’t have anything to give.” 

“Who’d you get?” His dad grins and Hiccup rolls his eyes, reaching for his city coat before thinking better of it and grabbing his high school coat with the shearling collar. 

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be ‘secret’ Santa.” 

“Come into town with me, there’s a Christmas festival at the fundraiser, I bet you can find something there.” 

“I…of course there is,” Hiccup sighs and there’s something about Berk that makes resisting futile. 

He used to hate it. The ever-present to-do list, and expectation and predictability. The seasons. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt the seasons or really felt that they matter. It’s like the last ten years happened in one big continuous blur of summer and now that he’s finally cold again, reality is setting back in. 

His dad insists on driving the old wood paneled station wagon, rear wheel drive skidding on last night’s fresh powder as he parks in the lot by the skating rink. A few people shake their heads at the skid marks in the snow, waving at Hiccup’s dad and after a moment of gossip-fueled surprise, Hiccup as well. 

“Santa’s sleigh is set up over by the North side,” Astrid completes the feeling, skating by on the opposite side of the rink wall, checking something off of a list and tucking the pen back behind her ear, halfway under the Santa hat on her head. “Thanks, Stoick, oh.” She skids to a graceful stop with a spray of ice when she sees Hiccup. “What are you doing here?” 

“Shopping.” He shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets. He should have grabbed a scarf, at least to protect from the suspicious ice in her expression. He would have thought that was over after yesterday, but it seems to reaffirm itself every time they’re apart. 

Maybe he should just stick close until she forgets how to shove the wall back up. 

“Where am I setting up the bonfire?” Snotlout asks, pushing a wheelbarrow of dry wood through the snow, “I’m chapping.” He points at his face and Astrid snaps out of her freeze. “Right, over by the gourmet marshmallow stand.” 

“Gourmet marshmallows?” Hiccup asks, taken aback. 

“We’ve got like two microbreweries now, dude, catch up.” Snotlout starts walking purposefully, like he knows where he’s going, and Astrid rests her clipboard on the skating rink railing for a second and looks at Hiccup. 

“If you want to help, you could…I mean, he doesn’t want to ruin his manicure.” 

“Sure, yeah.” Hiccup nods and his dad claps him on the shoulder hard enough that his knees wobble. 

“That’s the Christmas spirit!” 

Snotlout appreciates not having to ruin his manicure. It doesn’t take long at all to stack the bonfire into something like the pile of logs he remembers and then he gets roped into organizing the line for kids to line up to see Santa. The fundraiser is for some charity collecting canned food and there’s a dunk tank where Tuffnut and Fishlegs have bravely volunteered to be dunked repeatedly into a tub of cold water, although Tuffnut appears to be regretting it as he falls, sopping wet and shivering from the lever seat yet again. 

“Hiccup!” He comes up sputtering, pounding on the inside of the plexiglass, “you have to save me—long time no see, you look good by the way, loving the hair, it _works_ —But you have to save me!” 

“Uh, hey Tuff.” Hiccup shrugs, “who am I saving you from?” 

“Who? Who?” Tuffnut laughs through clenched, shivering teeth as he climbs back up onto the seat. “It’s not a who, no no, it’s a what and it is my niece, and she is waterboarding me to death. She’s got an arm like—well, she’s got an arm like Astrid.” 

“Abby?” Hiccup asks, startled, and Tuffnut nods. 

“She went to get more ammunition, you can’t let he return.” 

“I’m not going to kidnap your niece because you made the horrible decision to be repeatedly waterboarded in the name of charity.” 

“Hiccup!” Abby runs around the corner, dropping an armful of cans of corn and other vegetetables before flinging her arms around Hiccup’s waist. “Hi! I didn’t know you were coming!”

“Uh, I didn’t either.” He doesn’t quite know what to do with her exuberance, especially when she looks at him with all of Ruffnut’s most chaotic determination behind Astrid’s blue eyes. 

“Wanna watch me dunk Uncle Tuffnut?” 

“Please, man, have some mercy,” Tuffnut accepts a towel from Fishlegs and Hiccup sighs, looking around. 

“Where’s her mom?”

“Had to work,” Tuff shudders, “she’s with Astrid but—”

“But she has to work too. Ok.” Once again: Is this a secret Santa present? 

He looks out at Astrid, darting across the skating rink to tell someone where to set something up and sighs. It’s not. It’s not enough, not while he’s somehow so confused to feel so comfortable while he’s at home. Not enough when Astrid sounds like Berk and he can still remember how she felt last night, all blue satin and perfume, exhausted in the kitchen, cleaning late at night like she’s all that keeps his house together. 

Not his house. Not anymore. He lives in a two-bedroom apartment with a pool on the roof and a doorman. 

“Auntie Astrid said she was going to take me skating, can you?” Abby asks and Hiccup hems and haws. 

“I don’t—I’m not really an ice-skater in as many words. We could, I mean, what do you like to do aside from dunking your uncle in ice cold water?” 

“There’s going to be a bonfire,” she suggests. 

“I am not responsible enough to be responsible for a child around fire,” he admits, “do you want to go see Santa?” 

That gets a nod and a little bit of enthusiasm until she’s an arms length away from his dad and she pauses, looking back at Hiccup, suspicious. 

“This is just Mr. Haddock in a Santa costume.” 

“Come here, Ms. Abigail,” Hiccup’s dad says in his booming voice, offering Abby a hand and waiting for her to take it. “Last I heard, you were hoping for a bike and I passed that up the ladder, is there anything else you want this Christmas.” 

“How do you know Santa?” Abby asks, and Hiccup thinks to himself that the Santa myth has persisted a hint too long in the case of this particular child. 

“Friend of the family,” Hiccup’s dad shrugs and Abby looks back at him for confirmation. 

Astrid is still skating around giving orders and Hiccup tries not to wince, nodding to Abby that it’s true. 

Given that his dad put all the presents in his stocking when he was a kid kind of makes it true, right? His dad is some version of Santa to someone somewhere at some time. 

“There’s something else I want,” Abby announces before going onto her tip toes to whisper in his dad’s ear. Whatever she says makes his dad laugh and look at him with that all-knowing expression and Hiccup turns away before anyone can read him. 

And there he sees the photographer from the _Snowglobes_ disaster, the one who looked at Astrid like she was something to pursue. Greg? Gus? Whatever his name is, he’s snapping pictures of Abby and Santa, raising his camera to get another angle and zooming in slightly. 

“Hey, buddy—”

“Gustav.” The guy says without looking over, taking a picture of Hiccup’s dad laughing, “Larson photography.” 

“I know.” Hiccup clears his throat, “we met the other night. At the bachelor party.” 

“Right,” Gustav limply shakes Hiccup’s hand before whistling up at his dad, “Santa, can I get a profile from the other side?” 

“As I was just about to say, isn’t it kind of creepy to take pictures of other people’s kids with Santa?” Hiccup steps in front of the lens and Gustav gets a surely flattering picture of him before lowering the camera. 

“Christmas wedding photographer. Christmas wedding. Christmas festival. Santa.” Gustav points around like it’s obvious and Hiccup crosses his arms, trying to look stern. 

“I doubt anyone asked you to take pictures of random kids with Santa.” When it doesn’t impact the way he hopes, he deflates slightly, “do I need to call Astrid over here?” 

“Is that a threat?” Gustav’s smile is wide and goofy and it reminds Hiccup of Throk and the way Astrid held his hand to avoid the attention. “Because I’ll take pictures of kids all day if it makes her come over here.” 

“That’s her niece, so…” He clears his throat, trying for authority, “Snotlout was asking for you, he wants some before the ring pictures of his manicure.” 

“Now? Now when,” Gustav gestures at the meeting Santa setup, “when all the Christmas is happening?” 

“He’s the groom, do you want me to tell him that you put something ahead of the groom?” 

That threat works and Gustav grumbles as he trudges off in search of Snotlout just in time for Abby to finish whispering to Hiccup’s dad. Astrid pauses on the other side of the rink wall and looks between Abby and her current company. 

“Everything ok?” She asks Abby, “I thought you were with Tuff.” 

“Uh, he tapped out,” Hiccup explains, “I figured Santa—”

“Mr. Haddock,” Abby corrects suspiciously, but she runs over to grab Hiccup’s hand and drag him to the side of the rink. “Can we skate now?” 

“Sure,” Astrid sighs, “you said you had to shop, right?” There’s something leading in the question and Hiccup pauses before nodding. 

“It can wait.” 

“Rental booth is over there, I’ve got one more thing to check-in on.” She points him in the direction of a large covered booth advertising skates at an hourly rate. 

When he tries to get skates for Abby and only Abby, that gets him huge, disappointed eight-year-old Astrid eyes, which is a weakness he should have guessed he’d have. More than his weakness to not break bones or cut off fingers, but either way, that’s how he ends up in skates at the edge of the rink, watching as Abby flings herself forward with half-graceful determination and one hand outstretched towards the wall. 

He’s wearing the skates. That’s what she asked for. He could probably sit down on the bench and watch and see what he can get overnighted to Berk that might be a reasonable gift for Astrid. 

“You skate?” Astrid asks before he can sit, one of those little questions she can’t seem to stop peppering him with, like she’s trying to root out a mole. It forces him honest in a way that’s almost uncomfortable, especially with her looking at him. Through him. Checking him against something in her head that he’s sure isn’t flattering. Something he’s starting to want to change in a way so desperate he’s embarrassed to even admit it to himself. 

“No,” he puts a tentative rented blade out on the ice and tests how it’ll take his weight. “Not since I was a kid.” 

She cocks her head, silently questioning his logic with sharp eyes that are a little more curious. A little more probing. A little closer to the candlelit fire when he complimented her on the party the night before. 

“She pouted at me,” he confesses, and Astrid sets her clipboard down before purposefully pulling her mittens on and offering him a hand. “What?” 

“If you’re going to spoil her like everyone else,” she takes his cold hand in her wool covered one and stares purposefully at the skate he still hasn’t trusted on the ice, “you can at least commit to it.” 

“You want me to—”

“Come on.” She, as always, has no time for his excuses, “you didn’t drop me.” 

“You didn’t have knives attached to your feet,” he jokes, stepping out onto the ice anyway and trying to stay balanced when Astrid starts skating easily backwards, holding both his hands in hers. 

“Heels,” she shrugs, checking over her shoulder like she’s parallel parking and her braid falls over her shoulder, some glitter trapped in the weave of it. It distracts him enough that he totters, momentarily off balance until she glares at him, “just…easy. Keep it loose, I’m doing all the work.” 

“Isn’t that the problem? I’m supposed to be helping and you’re towing me,” he complains like he wants her to stop, like her mittens in his hands don’t feel like home in all the ways he doesn’t want to reconcile with yet. 

“Maybe I like you out of your element.” She shrugs, tugging him through the wide turn at the end of the rink and passing Abby, who doubles down, determined to catch up. That makes Astrid laugh, a sudden bark that makes the corners of her eyes squint and his skates slip out so much that he flails, barely catching himself on the wall. 

“Well, I am that.” He waits for a second on jelly knees with Astrid arm-crossed and judging him a foot away as Abby pulls ahead in the race. “In this whole town, really.” 

“You always thought that,” she shakes her head, offering him both of her hands and he takes them. 

“It’s true.” 

“Hey! Practice turns in the middle!” She calls at Abby, who instantly apologizes, and starts skating backwards again, a little slower, a little less graceful. More mindful of her trailer full of unpredictable baggage. 

“You’re good with her.” He wants to compliment her again but isn’t sure how, what’s allowed, whether she’s accepting them or tolerating him until after the wedding. He’s not even sure when he started wanting her to accept them, unless he never stopped, which is more terrifying than anything else. 

“It takes a village,” she shrugs, pausing by the rink exit and placing his clumsy hand gently on the wall so that he can hold himself upright, “a village you seem to be fitting in with.” She steps onto the rubber mats covering the concrete, “you said you had to shop, right? Looking for anything special?” 

“No,” he lies, watching the way her hair moves when she bends down to untie her skates. “Just secret Santa. Thanks for the invite to that, by the way, I’m not complaining, I just—”

“I just thought if you’re going to be around, might as well spread the…joy.” She calls Abby’s name, “want to help Hiccup go Christmas shopping?” 

“Coming!” Abby scrambles across the ice towards them and he cocks his head at Astrid. 

“You have time?” 

“Absolutely not, but I don’t trust your clumsy self around my niece with knives on your feet.” She offers him her hand again and he accepts it, stepping gingerly off of the ice. It’s a toss-up between whether she makes him feel steadier or the rubber does, but he doesn’t think the odds are fifty-fifty. 

Ninety-ten, maybe. 

“That’s fair.” 

“I can manage things along the way,” she assures before turning around to change into her snow-boots. 

“Sure. Good. Thanks.” 


	8. Chapter 8

“A scarf is safe.” Astrid says after a long moment of just enough silence for her to worry that Abby is about to start chattering. “Eunice has a booth right up here.” 

Hiccup’s eyebrows rise slowly, darker than they used to be, and he looks at her like she’s crazy. 

“What?” 

“Eunice has a booth?” He snorts, “have you decided I’m useless to you after all so you’re sacrificing me to handsy old ladies?” 

“What’s sacrificing?” Abby asks, grabbing Hiccup’s hand and hanging, toes of her brand new boots scuffing on the asphalt. 

“Pick up your feet, Abs.” 

“What’s sacrificing?” Abby does pick her feet up though, so Astrid looks expectantly at Hiccup. 

“What do I tell her?” He hisses, eyes a little wider, cheeks flushed from the two laps around the skating rink. 

She shouldn’t have done that. She just wanted to see him unsteady, like it would undermine him in some way, but instead it just made him recognizable, like seeing a face she knows under prosthetic maturity. And ever since she used him to avoid Throk, she keeps thinking about how easy it was to trust him, even temporarily. Even with something stupid. 

“The truth is usually a good place to start.” 

“Well, um, you see that—sometimes when someone—in this case,” he clears his throat and looks up at Astrid through his eyelashes for a second before continuing in a surprisingly sincere rush, “I was going to help your aunt with some things but then she decided I’m not as useful as she thought so she’s going to turn me over to Mrs. Johnson to be a sweater model instead of dealing with me.” 

“What part of that is sacrificing?” Abby hangs from Hiccup’s hand again so that her heels drag. 

“Feet.” 

“The part where she turns me over.” He grins conspiratorially at her, looking up to see if Astrid is watching and she wonders when he started that. It was before the Christmas party, because she felt flashes of his eyes on her all night. 

More than that, she wonders when he stopped. 

“I’m not sacrificing him,” Astrid stops before she can think too deep into that, waving at Eunice and picking up the end of a hand knitted scarf. 

“Too bad,” Eunice upholds her reputation. 

“Secret Santa gift,” Astrid tries to redirect the conversation even as Hiccup blushes a constipated blush, Abby still swinging around from his arm. “A scarf is safe.” 

“Not particularly sentimental though.” 

“Sometimes that’s good,” she takes the scarf off of the rack and wraps it around her neck to demonstrate, “I don’t know who you got, of course, but I don’t think Snotlout will want anything to do with a sentimental gift.” 

“No,” Abby lets go of Hiccup’s hand to pull the scarf off of Astrid’s neck, “try the red one, it’s prettier.” 

“It’s not for me,” Astrid reminds her gently, trying to put the first scarf she grabbed back as Abby drapes a thick, red thing with tassels over her neck. 

“There, doesn’t it look pretty?” 

Hiccup looks, too long, hands waving. Flailing even. And there he is again, the face she knew so well, the face that hurt her, the guy she can’t believe has really changed that much even though all evidence points to the alternative. 

“Yeah—” He gets out right as she gets the scarf off, handing it back to Eunice. 

“Not for me.” She rubs her hands together, “we’ll keep looking.” She gets the feeling that he’s following her again when he moves to the next booth and picks up a hand carved Christmas ornament in the shape of a sled. 

“How about a sled for mice?” He suggests, “it’s functional, a good winter hobby for the hamster in your life.” 

That makes Abby laugh, a real snorting, giggling laugh, and any productivity is a goner. 

“I could get a birdhouse with holly berries glued onto it,” he squints up at the sky, “for all zero of the birds that didn’t migrate away for winter.” He starts flitting booth to booth, speaking largely at Abby but glancing at Astrid just frequently enough for her to gauge her own expression. 

Smiling. Reluctantly. Apologetically at the few stuffier booth owners he manages to offend. 

“A snowglobe…with my house in it, so that the mystery recipient can always think of me when they see it,” he holds up a custom glass sphere and grimaces, squatting down to Abby’s eye level, “I think I saw a ghost in the attic window.” 

She presses her nose to the glass to look closer before Astrid can say anything about smudging it. 

“I don’t see it.” 

“You know, some people say that my house is haunted…” He glances up at Astrid before continuing and she gives him a subtle shake of the head, “it’s not though, and this snowglobe is clearly cursed and a liar, so bad present.” 

“More,” Abby runs to the next booth, the last on this row, and holds up a Dreamcatcher with a sprig of mistletoe woven into the middle of it. 

“This,” Hiccup stares at it for a second before looking up at Astrid with a private, joking smile that makes her remember she’s seen strippers with him and he drinks and he’s probably had all sorts of girlfriends since they were naked for the first time in her childhood bed that Christmas Eve, “what purpose could this possibly serve?” 

“Hiccup,” she gives him a warning look that he, for some reason, perceives as an invitation to continue. 

“This is a dreamcatcher, which allegedly captures your bad dreams so that you don’t have them.” He says mostly to Astrid now, “and this is mistletoe, which—”

“Is for kissing,” Abby fills in, her voice sing-song. 

“So, what is the purpose of this dreamcatcher?” Hiccup glances at the booth selling it just long enough for Astrid to stoop down and collect a handful of half soggy snow, perfect for molding, “is a church selling this—ugh!” 

Hiccup grunts when the snowball collides with his jaw, exploding in his hair and half falling down the collar of his shirt. His eyes widen and he coughs, fidgeting to let the snow out of the bottom of his shirt while Abby giggles, looking between them delighted. 

“If you aren’t going to buy that, please put it down,” the pastor’s wife, who is in fact the one selling the dreamcatcher, says sternly, and as soon as Hiccup throws it back on the counter, the tension breaks. 

Astrid scoops up an armful of snow, ducking behind the booth to form it into snowballs, throwing the first misshapen one at Hiccup’s chest as he comes around the corner. He grabs his own handful of snow, the first shot smacking her on the side as she runs a few steps into the nearby park. 

Abby isn’t choosing a side, she’s firing snowballs at both of them, war cry in place on her face, and Hiccup barely dodges a tackle attempt right as Astrid is approaching to smash an oversized snowball on top of his head. His left foot encounters just the wrong patch of ice and he slips, arms pinwheeling before catching on her shoulders and pushing her back. 

He lands on top of her in a fluffy bank of powder, her arsenal of snowballs trapped between their chests. 

“Oof,” his warm sigh tickles her cheeks as he seemingly catches his breath, weight relaxing ever so slightly on top of her as he opens his eyes, all that green transfixing and way too close. 

“Are you ok?” She mutters, sure that she’s never heard him silent this long, and his cold fingers brush some snow off of her cheek. She bites her lip. 

“Are you?” He starts to get up, knee moving against the outside of her thigh but Abby hoots and dumps another armful of snow on his back. 

“Abby,” Astrid chides, but when she tries to lift her head, Hiccup’s hair tickles her forehead, too close and too present and utterly too much. 

“Astrid?” The absolute wrong voice calls from far too close and Astrid’s eyes widen. 

“Is that?” Hiccup scrambles off of her with a little more determination and a lot more clumsiness, hand pinning her coat for a second he gets to his knees. 

“Throk,” she answers the question and leaps to her feet, offering him a hand and brushing him off with the other as he stands up. His shirt is soaking through and he shivers. 

“Are you ok?” Throk asks, too earnest, looking at Hiccup with suspicion that she wishes she still agreed he deserves. 

“Fine,” she tries to brush her hair away from her shoulder but finds a chunk of ice in it. Her other hand is still locked around Hiccup’s so she gives up on the hair, pasting a fake smile on her face over the real giggles that weren’t quite obliterated by her too close encounter with Hiccup. “I’m good. We were just—”

“Snowball fight,” Hiccup fills in, bending down to grab her Santa hat from the snowbank with his free hand and setting it back on her head. “And I’m criminally clumsy, but we’re fine.” 

“If you’re sure,” Throk lingers, and Astrid squeezes Hiccup’s hands, hating that he’s her deterrent even though she’s starting to worry that he always was. 

Or starting to worry that she can’t deny it anymore. 

“Absolutely,” she nods, “is Tim with you?” She asks, hoping for the boy to bound around the corner and at least cause a distraction. 

“With his Mom.” Throk shoves his hands in his pockets and Astrid feels conspicuous with her messed up hair and the embarrassed laugh still trying to make its way out of her throat when she remembers Hiccup’s weight on top of her. “Through the holiday. Or I get him back in the afternoon, but it’s a two hour drive and there’s going to be that storm.” 

“I’m sorry,” she tries to mean it and Hiccup’s thumb swipes almost habituatlly over the back of her hand in a way that makes her chest twinge. 

“I got the recital, though,” Throk says like she’s supposed to care and Abby saves her, yet again. 

“I was really good,” she announces, grabbing Hiccup’s other hand and hanging from it, scuffing her boots through the snow. Astrid can’t bring herself to remind herself that bragging is rude, not when this is so awkward she’s not sure what would come out after it. 

“Pick up your feet,” Hiccup reminds the little girl and Throk glares at him for the shortest instant until he remembers himself. 

That he’s the one-night-stand she regrets and Hiccup is her _boyfriend_. 

“Well, I’ll see you around.” He waves before scurrying off into the festival and Abby drops Hiccup’s hand, pointing at the nearby playground with a hopeful smile. 

“Can I go swing?” She stands up a little straighter, “please?” 

“Sure.” Astrid should go manage the festival, but looking over her shoulder nothing seems out of place. And she has to breathe. “You can go keep shopping while I watch her, I don’t think I was that much help, anyway.” 

“If not for your interference, I would have ended up with the mistletoe dreamcatcher, so you should give yourself some credit.” He walks with her towards the playground. 

“You know, that is a weirdly specific thing for the church to be selling. I didn’t think they were so…on the nose.” Bringing it up makes her blush and Hiccup laughs, reaching up to free the ice chunk from her hair. 

“Maybe you need one.” 

“What?” 

“You know, maybe if you want to avoid the Throks of the world when I’m gone,” he clears his throat, his expression wary like he’s stepping out onto a lake right in front of a ‘thin ice’ sign, “maybe you need something to catch your mistletoe dreams before they get you into trouble.” Before she can get mad at him for mentioning it, he squeezes the hand she didn’t realize was still in his and takes a step back, “which, you can probably let me go now that he’s not watching anymore.” 

“Right.” She clears her throat, mitten-covered hands in her pockets, “sorry.” 

“No, don’t be, I just—you don’t have to explain yourself, I can see he’s persistent—”

“And it wasn’t a…’mistletoe dream’ thing, whatever—I wasn’t desperate.” She feels the need to tell him but feels stupid as soon as she does and he nods like it’s obvious, like she’s airing out more than she needs to. “He was new in town and he and Ruff had been on a couple dates and it hadn’t worked out and I was working to distraction to make…Christmas for everyone, and he asked me out and didn’t mind that it was really late and I was really overdressed—”

“Trust me, no one would mind that.” He gives her an out so willingly that she doesn’t take it. 

“And he was nice, and I thought maybe it was time to follow everyone’s advice and date, or something.” She looks at Abby, laughing and jumping off of the swing into a snowbank. They should be icy, but there was enough fresh powder last night to make them inviting again. “But he’s a walking bag of attachment issues, not a man, so it didn’t work out.” 

“When you say everyone wanted you to date…” He trails off like he’s not sure he wants to ask before running his hand through wet hair that looks more like him every day he’s here and out of that suit, “since—”

“Since Sam died.” She cuts him off before he can insinuate that it has anything to do with him. He doesn’t need to know that she didn’t really date in college, nothing serious, nothing that could hurt her. “Everyone rallied around Ruff and Abby and after Snotlout met Eret, attention was largely turned to how lonely I must be.” 

“Were you?” He asks, prying like she doesn’t want to, and she’s shocked it took him this long. 

Her phone rings and she fumbles it out of her back pocket, swearing when she sees Snotlout Jorgenson on the ID, “I’ve got to take this.” 

“Fine, yeah, you’re working, I get it.” 

“What’s wrong?” She answers, turning her back to Hiccup and looking back at the festival for the column of smoke or geyser of water that appeared in her brief absence. 

“Nothing,” Snotlout shouts like the exact opposite is true, “everything is just peachy, Astrid! It’s great! I wanted my giant uncle in a Santa Claus costume to kick my wedding photographer’s ass two days before my wedding!” 

“What?” She looks at Hiccup and gestures for him to gather Abby and follow, “I’m on my way—”

“Well you better hurry before Gustav has a size sixteen snow boot up his—”

She hangs up before he can commit to the details. 

Sure enough, when she manages to run through the crowd to the Santa’s sleigh setup, Stoick is holding Gustav by the back of his collar and yelling in his face, the young man’s feet dangling a few feet above the ground. 

“…all the disrespectful, irresponsible—”

“Am I on the naughty list now?” Gustav manages to squeak through his undoubtedly restricted airway and Stoick holds him up higher, beard glinting peach in the sun reflecting off of the snow. 

“Dad,” Hiccup finally catches up and Abby grabs Astrid’s hand as he steps forward, hand outstretched, “I already talked to him about the creepy pictures. We should get the police involved—”

“Police.” Stoick scoffs, but he drops Gustav into the snow anyway. “I can take care of my own privacy.” 

“I can see that,” Hiccup looks dryly around the crowd, something calm and level in his demeanor that he lacked at eighteen. Something steady, to be relied on. “Really private.” 

“This is Berk, son,” Stoick hops down from the sleigh then, his boot landing squarely on the camera abandoned in the snow. The crunch is louder than the hush of the crowd. “Berk is my privacy.” 


	9. Chapter 9

Hiccup buys the red scarf. Abby was right, Astrid does look pretty in it. Not that she doesn’t look pretty blushing a snowbank or defensive at a playground or gliding around on the ice like she was born for the snow. 

He wraps it in burgundy paper and adjusts the ribbon before adjusting his tie, the same green he wore to the Christmas party. His assistant told him that it brings out his eyes and he’s hoping now that she’s right and that it’s a good thing. 

He’s going to talk to her tonight. 

He wracked his brain all day yesterday, watching her flit around his dad’s property, moving chairs and cutting down trees to decorate the walkway from the parking lot. He tried to remember what it felt like to leave her and came back with nothing but desperation to see the You are Entering Berk, Population: Irrelevant sign in his rearview mirror. 

He can’t say he’s feeling that now. 

Not in the same way at least. Not as deep. He doesn’t need to make his mark here, it’s reserved for him, a quiet kind of calm in his dad’s wake that feels right when Astrid is holding his hand so naturally that she forgets she’s doing it. 

When he comes downstairs and sets his secret Santa on the stack under the immaculate green and gold tree, she’s pacing in front of the hearth in yet another dress that makes him freeze, mouth going dry. When she takes a step, he can see one knee through a long slit in the long skirt, and even though it’s nearly floor length and the sleeves go to her wrists, when she turns around to pace the other way, he sees that the back dips below her shoulder blades. 

“—can’t get another photographer out here?” She’s pleading into the phone, an edge in her voice, “or even just another camera—No, I understand that sir, but I have to re-iterate, that event was not connected to the Jorgenson wedding account, Larson photography had no business being there—Yes, I know Mr. Larson, I recognize that there was equipment damaged and agreed to take out of my fee…”

Hiccup holds his hand out and is shocked when Astrid listens, almost grateful as she hands him the phone and he holds it up to his ear. 

The man on the other end is yelling. Screaming even. The kind of shrieking that Hiccup got his first promotion dialing down, and as much as it infuriates him to know that someone was talking to Astrid like that, he forces his most business-like tone. 

“Sir. Please.” He says like it’s a client, like it’s his job on the line, and Astri’s shoulders relax, her dress pulling tighter and impossibly better against her chest. “Can we speak reasonably, or do I need to hang up?”

“Are you the manager?” 

“No,” he says a little too forcefully, looking at Astrid and willing her to relax, “I’m a friend.” He risks it but she doesn’t tell him not to. “And your employee was taking pictures of strange children and our Santa responded in kind.” 

“By choking my photographer?” The guy asks, vulnerability between his syllables and Hiccup weighs it for a second. 

“If your photographer had stopped taking pictures of children without consent forms at first prompt, this wouldn’t have been a problem.” 

The low drum of unrelated conversation drags on and Astrid touches his arm, willing to take over, her velvet sleeve brushing against his wrist in a way that makes him wish he’d worn less. He wants to feel her lack of intention, to record it in his mind, to think about it later no matter how much it’s not allowed. 

“We will refund half your payment,” the guy says, after a pause, and Hiccup nods, letting himself pat Astrid’s shoulder and hope that it’s comfort. 

“Does that include the security deposit, because that depends on you fulfilling the agreement.” He tries, frowning at the pause, “I can check the contract—”

“The security deposit too. We’ll refund it as soon as possible.” 

“Thank you very much,” he says, “when will you be here for the wedding on the twenty-fifth?”

The silence drags then the other side hangs up. 

“What happened?” Astrid tucks her hair behind her ear. The ear that sticks out a little too much, the only thing humanizing in the whole scene. “Hiccup…”

If he wanted to torture himself, he could call her tone begging. 

“They’re returning half the payment, along with the security deposit.” 

“That’s better than I got,” she snorts, wringing her hands, and he holds her phone out towards her. “Men don’t listen to women, usually Snotlout steps in. He asks for my opinion at every turn, directly in earshot of the client it’s…” She trails off and clears her throat and Hiccup wonders how her velvet sides would feel, “he just says what I say, it’s…what did they say?” 

“That they’re returning the security deposit along with half the payment,” he hands her phone back, trying not to touch her, “that’s the best I could do. I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t have a wedding photographer,” she says like it’s a secret, and he can’t help pulling her into a too hard hug, his fingertips sliding under one side of the back of her dress. Her chin digs into his shoulder and she huffs, a strong jawed little motion he doesn’t quite recognize. 

“It’s ok.” 

“No, it’s not,” she pulls back, immediately back to pacing like she doesn’t know how the contact just burned him. “It’s Snotlout’s wedding and—”

“Hey,” he grabs her hand because it’s hard to feel like he’s not allowed to and she pauses instead of breaking his arm, “you’ll figure it out.” 

“How?” She asks, her voice breaking slightly. 

“You always do.” 

Her eyes harden but she seems to be too tired to upkeep the rift between them and she sags, resting her forehead against his shoulder. He hugs her again, hand between her shoulder blades, everything in him resisting the urge to kiss the top of her head. 

“Astrid—” His dad walks into the room but pauses when he sees them, taking a big step backwards as a wide smile spreads across his face. “Don’t mind me—”

“Stoick,” she jumps back out of the hug, straightening her dress, “what do you need?” All business again, even as her shoulders slump slightly. “What do you need?” 

“I was just hoping to talk to you,” his dad tries to escape to the kitchen, “but it’s not urgent, I don’t want to interrupt—”

“You aren’t.” Hiccup holds his hands up like he’s been caught. 

“I’m not?” His dad wiggles his eyebrows and Astrid ignores it. 

“What’s up?” 

“I was hoping to talk to you,” His dad looks between them again and Hiccup’s hands still tingle remembering how Astrid felt. “Can I show you something?” 

“Sure,” Astrid follows him into the kitchen and pauses when she sees what’s on the table. 

Photo albums, filled with polaroids, all dated in clumsy sharpie. 

Hiccup grimaces when he sees a naked toddler picture of himself but Astrid lingers on it, fingertips brushing the page. There are pictures of him in little league, showing how clearly miserable he was. There’s high school debate club. The day he left for college, his car packed to the gills amid the snow drifts in the front yard, grinning reluctantly, one foot already on another planet. 

Junior Prom, his arms around Astrid’s waist at the bottom of the stairs, his braces glinting in the camera flash. And the way she’s looking at him, like she’s not sure if he’s real. His voice catches in his throat, which is probably a good thing, because if he thought he could form the words, he’d ask to keep the picture. 

“My wedding album,” his dad directs Astrid’s attention to the last book in the row, the oldest, the clumsiest. Polaroids taped to the notebook pages, his parents posed at the bottom of the stairs like a much more permanent prom photo, his mom young and smiling and his dad beardless. “We got married at the church down the road and came back here. My mom cooked dinner, then we went out to the cabin on the back forty for a week. It was perfect.” 

“I’ve heard this story,” Astrid smiles at him, “it’s why we converted the cabin into the honeymoon suite.” 

“You know that you feel like part of the family, Astrid,” his dad looks purposefully at him, “like a daughter, really, the daughter I never had—”

“Stoick,” Astrid drags him back on track in a somber tone, sensing bad news. 

“I’m more than happy to let you use the place to entertain the quilting club and I’m so happy for Snotlout and Eret, but bringing people in from the outside and taking so many pictures—the instant-gram and…” He pats Astrid on the shoulder, “I just don’t think it’s for me.” 

“Dad, you have a Facebook,” Hiccup tries, but his dad brushes him off. 

“That’s different, Snotlout set up the privacy level for me.” 

“My website needs pictures,” Astrid insists, her voice quiet, like the defeat is looming over her but it’s not in her not to fight, “it’s almost ready to launch after the wedding and this place…it would bring so much to the town, to you, to the farm—”

“It’s not about the money, Astrid.” Hiccup’s dad is gentler with her than he is with him and it’s somehow more bruising. “It’s about tradition, about keeping things the way they’ve always been. Christmas in Berk is about family, not about some fancy wedding. Definitely not about putting a fancy wedding on instant-gram and profiting on it.” He points at the photo album again, “simple was magical.” 

Hiccup can’t help but look at that prom photo and agree. 

“The wedding package—even just one wedding can bring in thousands of dollars.” Astrid pitches, but the life has gone out of her voice, her face pale. “And either way, the pictures for this wedding were going to be my advertisement but…but the photographer isn’t coming…”

“Oh, good, so it’s settled then!” His dad claps his hands together, “I think I hear a car outside, that must be Snotlout.” He goes to get the door and Astrid practically collapses, elbows on the counter, head in her hands. 

“Hey, we’ll figure it out,” he rubs her back and she snaps up to look at him, eyes fierce in what finally seems like the right direction, cutting straight through his chest. 

“We?” 

“I said I’d help.” 

“You can’t just swoop in at the last minute and save everything,” her hands ball into fists and she sniffs back a tear leaking through the emotional gate, “you have to be there the whole time. There’s no magic solution, there’s no Hiccup fix—”

“Where’s this coming from?” He steps back, the sound of congratulations in the other room so opposite to the chill in this one, “I’m just trying to—”

“You’re just going to leave again.” She shakes her head, rubbing her temples and trying for a game face that seems just out of reach, “there’s no point in any of this. There’s no point in you helping, there’s no point in how nice you’ve been to Abby. There’s no reason for you to keep looking at me like that—”

“Like what?” 

“Like you even think of me when you go back home.” She spits home like an insult and his feet feel so steady on Haddock ground that it ironically doesn’t hit how it should. “Like this isn’t just some Christmas getaway to you. Like I’m not just a failed plan to get out of taking care of your father’s failing farm.” 

“You aren’t—” 

“I’m not what, Hiccup?” Her chest is heaving, but her eyes look brighter, like she removed some of the weight clouding them. 

“Why’d we break up in the first place?” His voice is low, not as guarded as he’d like it to be. Maybe this will make it easier to leave. Maybe this will make the prom picture as much of a relic as the rows of firs growing outside. “Since Abby’s recital, when you grabbed my hand, I’ve just been trying not to wonder why we aren’t still together. It’s so easy, Astrid, I—”

“Because you left,” she says without emotion, the hard honed edge of the words sharp enough to cut by weight alone, “because you left and you didn’t check in and when you did, it was all about me joining you. About me getting out of Berk when that’s never been what I wanted. This is my home, and it’s not yours.” 

“You…you make it feel like it could be.” He says too quiet, his hands aching to reach out to her. 

“And when the worst happened, when my brother died and left Ruff and Abby all alone, you weren’t there. You fell off of the list of people I could rely on years before and I…” She swallows hard. 

“You could have called.” He wishes she had, and it makes him wonder how different things would be now, if they’d still be fighting in his childhood kitchen. 

He imagines her in his apartment in San Diego and she floats above the Moroccan tile, half-formed, like a ghost unwilling to haunt the unfamiliar, and his head spins, trying to fit the last week into his reality. 

“So could you, and in this case, I was busier.” Her half smile is sad, but unguarded, eyes settling like the sea after a storm, “for once.” 

“Astrid—”

“I’ve got a party to run and bad news to break, I’ll see you later.” 

“Bad news?” Snotlout appears in the doorway, frowning above his dark green sweater, “what’s wrong? What did Hiccup do?” 

Left, he wants to say, but Astrid is all business again. 

“The photographer pulled out,” Astrid says, somber but comforting as she puts her hand on Snotlout’s arm and rubs, “after Stoick broke his camera at the winter festival.” 

“No photographer,” Snotlout’s eyes widen, his face pale except for two angry red patches on his cheeks, “what do you mean no photographer? No one’s going to get pictures of the wedding? No one’s going to see me walk down the aisle?” His voice shakes, “what am I supposed to tell my grandkids when they ask how hot I used to be? What am I supposed to show them? Some picture from a regular day that I didn’t lead up to with biweekly hydrofacials? My grandkids are going to think I’m a liar, Astrid, you’re tearing my family apart—”

“I don’t think that’s a thing grandkids ask about,” Hiccup mumbles, head still spinning because making fun of Snotlout feels like home too. 

“Maybe yours,” Snotlout’s eyes are sharp, “except you won’t have any grandkids because you’re doing your best to die alone, so…”.

“Right,” Hiccup laughs, “you caught me.” 

Everything in him wants to run. To get in his car and go to the airport and get on a plane and think of anything other than Astrid’s eyes and hands and the way that she doesn’t think of him when he’s gone. 

And then she looks at him, expecting it, knowing him so well even after all of these years that he might as well be eighteen again. But he’s not. He’s twenty-eight and exhausted and the last decade feels like a dream that he’s just now waking up from, the twinkling tree through the doorway reminding him that miracles can happen, if you work for them. 

“Is everything ok?” Eret appears behind Snotlout, hand on his shoulder, snow in his hair. “The storm’s getting pretty bad out there, I’m not sure if everyone from town is going to be able to make it.” 

“And I’m not going to have pictures to show them later,” Snotlout moans, “why didn’t we just do this at the courthouse? This is exhausting.” 

“Because you said you’d be my guinea pig,” Astrid smiles at him, tapping her finger on the bottom of his chin, “for the wedding package. But that doesn’t matter now, because Stoick doesn’t want people from out of town using Haddock Manor as a venue so…”

“Shit,” Snotlout shifts his focus, “when did he say that?” 

“Just now,” she points at the albums and the prom picture haunts Hiccup alongside the picture with his car packed to the gills, ready to leave and not look back. “It’s over, Snot, back to planning kids’ parties at the golf course in Freezing to Death for me, I guess.” 

“Astrid, I’m so sorry,” Eret commiserates, and it’s like Hiccup isn’t even here, like there is a ghost in the Manor and it’s him. 

“It’s not over,” he says too loudly, “I’ll go get a camera and when I get back, I’ll talk to my dad and convince him to see sense—”

“Like that’s ever worked,” Astrid snips, still raw from their previous conversation and Hiccup looks at her, memorizing her face. 

“I can’t say I’ve ever really tried.” He pats his pocket for his rental car keys and nods to himself, “right, camera. The Walmart in Hopeless is open 24 hours, I’ll cut through the back forty to miss the traffic at the Tree Lighting Ceremony and be back in an hour.” 

He’s shocked when Astrid catches up to him at the coat closet, grabbing her own long wool coat and tugging a hat over her perfectly arranged hair before exchanging her heels for snow boots. 

“What are you doing?” He asks and she looks at him like he’s stupid. 

“I’m coming with you.” 

“You don’t have—”

“How do I know you’re not going to run away?” She opens the door and the wind howls past, carrying flakes the size of dimes into the toasty living room. “You don’t know anything about cameras.” 

“Fine.” 

He’d hoped that her coming meant she might want to talk, but her silence on the passenger side of his rental proves him wrong. She looks at her phone, scrolling through what he’d guess is her half-finished website, by the large blank spaces on the page. He’s going to get those filled, he’s done leaving holes without thinking about what they’ll look like. 

“Getting pretty bad out there,” Tuffnut’s voice chimes from the radio between Christmas songs, “the roads are plowed in town for the tree lighting, but anyone considering ranging farther than that is a…” He trails off and plays a fart sound. 

“Right you are, Tuff, a bunch of,” Gruffnut makes a fart sound, “out there getting stuck on the highway. I’m hearing from our traffic guy that the highway to Hopeless is completely impassable, it’s shut down at the gorge because of a thirteen car pileup. Jack-knifed semi completely blocking the Westbound side.” 

Tuffnut plays a sad wind down sound and Astrid looks at the side of Hiccup’s face, intent but alarmed. 

“Did you hear that?” 

“Focusing on not skidding out,” he pretends he hadn’t heard the bad news, urging the SUV carefully up the hill to the back forty. 

“The highway is blocked.” 

“Well we’re just going to hope that it’s clear by the time we get there,” he narrowly dodges a tree that hasn’t been trimmed back in too long and when he looks in the rear view, the house is nowhere to be seen, lights eclipsed by hills and snow. 

“Hope,” Astrid scoffs, covering her knee with her dress and looking out the window. 

“Just in from meteorology, who is looking at weather.com again instead of watching out for meteors, good going guys,” Tuffnut says two songs later, “the total for tonight has been bumped from fifteen to twenty-four inches. I really hope everyone is inside and not like, going on emergency shopping trips on sketchy dirt roads. That would be a stupid thing to do right now.” 

“Stupid, like your face, in fact,” Gruffnut adds and Tuff lets out an agonized sob. 

“I know you were blessed with the good looks, but you don’t have to rub it in.” He sighs, “playing ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’ because that’s where all the not stupid people are.” 

Three songs later, the front of the SUV dips down suddenly into a divot Hiccup forgot about, its headlights digging into the snow and leaving them in pitch darkness, save for the dim glow of the lights through fresh powder. 

“Dammit,” Hiccup whispers, revving the accelerator and wincing when the tires spin out. He tries reverse and gets all of six inches before the car spins in slow motion, the front right wheel slipping impossibly further into the divot in the road. 

“The jack-knifed semi is still blocking the Westbound lanes to Hopeless, by the way, just in case anyone is heading that direction,” Tuffnut breaks the silence and Hiccup turns off the radio, hitting his head on the steering wheel and listening to the slow tapping of snow falling and melting on what’s exposed of the hood of the car. 

“We’re stuck,” Astrid says simply, arms crossed, eyes wide and staring straight forward. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll see if there’s a shovel,” he offers, twisting to look around the backseat with the flashlight on his phone. When he doesn’t find one, he checks his phone for service. “And no service, of course.” 

“Of course,” Astrid laughs but checks her own phone, putting it face first back on her leg with a disappointed expression. “Of course we’re stuck, I should have known better.” 

“It was my idea.” 

“Exactly,” she sighs before shoving the door open and stepping out into knee deep snow. 

“Wait,” he jumps out too, grabbing the car keys when she starts breaking a trail, the snow off the road easily halfway up her thighs, “I know you’re mad but it can’t be worth freezing to death rather than spend a night in a car with me.” 

“I was up here earlier setting up the cabin for Eret and Snotlout tomorrow night,” she shouts back at him over the wind, “that sounds better to me than freezing to death in a car.” 

“Right,” he tries to jog and catch up, his shoes and pantlegs filling with snow that makes the cuff at the end of his left shin immediately go cold. “At least let me break the trail.” 

“I’ve got it,” she insists, slit in her dress flashing a brief glimpse of skin as she steps over a fallen log that’s barely a bump in the drifts at the surface. “If that’s the part of the road that floods, it can’t be more than a quarter mile.” 

That quarter mile feels like four miles, fighting the drifting powder, and he wants to suggest that they turn back about a dozen times, but Astrid is determined, stepping surely through the snow, her shoulders going white and icy in front of him. He’s frozen through after a few minutes so he can’t imagine how she feels in her dress and the sight of the dark cabin ahead can’t come soon enough. 

She opens the front door with a key on top of the doorframe, blue fingers shaking as she sets it on a table right inside and fumbles for the light switch. It clicks but nothing happens and she swears under her breath. 

“Power’s out,” she says around shivers, hat dripping ice onto the floor of the comparatively warmer room. At least there’s no wind. At least there’s a fireplace with a welcoming stack of dry wood next to it that he can barely make out from the moonlight drifting through the window. 

“Get inside,” he’s surprised how even he sounds, “I’ll make a fire.” 


	10. Chapter 10

Astrid shivers in front of the fire, willing life back into her fingers and biting her lip to keep her teeth from chattering audibly. Hiccup is rummaging around in the bedroom, the bedroom with the single king size bed and joking mistletoe that she hung in the middle of the bedframe earlier to surprise Snotlout. The bedroom with the roses on the bedside table and the warm throw across the foot of it. 

The only part of her skin she can really feel is where the tag from her dress is pressing into her lower back, somehow still stabbing her even though it must be sogged through, and something tells her she’s not getting her money back on this one. Not with the way it’s dripping onto the cushy rug in front of the hearth, and she takes the moment to curse her bank account. 

And her luck. And the car stuck outside. And the party that’s surely going wrong without her. And Hiccup. 

She takes plenty of time to curse Hiccup. 

“I thought my dad had some old sweaters up here, but—”

“I t-t-took them down to the h-house l-last week,” she chatters out, trying to sound stern but failing. Not that anyone can sound stern while they’re shivering. 

Hiccup sighs, reaching towards her but thinking better of it, warm enough to take off his suit jacket and set it on the arm of the small loveseat. He ditches the tie next, loosening the knot to tug it over his head and setting it on the loveseat as well. 

Then he starts unbuttoning his white button-down shirt and her eyes widen. 

“W-what are you d-doing?” 

“You’re not going to warm up in those soaking clothes,” he says, and she curses that he’s right, that even the side just barely tilted away from the fire is cold again. She curses velvet and how absorbent it is, and she curses the fact that she insisted on breaking the trail. 

She tells herself that if she’d let Hiccup do it, they’d still be out there, but his shoulders are broader than she remembers, his chest deeper in the white undershirt peeking through the first two undone buttons. 

“S-so you have to take your shirt off?” 

“I figured you’d want something to wear,” he says quietly, looking at her feet. Or maybe her leg in this stupid soggy dress with the stupid leg slit that she thought about him noticing in the dressing room, no matter how hard she tried not to. 

“Your sh-shirt.” She swallows hard against the shivers, thinking about the one bed and the candles around it. 

“My jacket only has two buttons.” He jokes, hands pausing on the fourth button of his shirt, “or you can just stand there and shiver, of course.” He looks at her face and she wishes he’d go back to her legs. She’s never hurt him on purpose before, no matter how necessary or true, and she hates the subdued edges to his expression. The caution in the way his face moves. “I’d prefer you didn’t though, it’s hard to watch.” 

She bites her lip and sighs, but it comes out more like a shudder. 

“Fine.” 

“Great,” he finishes unbuttoning his shirt and takes it off, handing it to her, careful not to brush her clammy fingers in the process. “I’ll umm…let you go get changed—”

“I can ch-change in the bedr-room.” She tries to walk around him, but he catches her shoulders. His hands are so warm they’re practically burning her through the wet fabric, and she bites back a gasp. 

“Please, don’t move away from the fire,” he squeezes a second too long before taking his hands off of her, and everything in her gut wants to follow, to curl up into him and hoard all of that warmth. 

“F-fine,” she holds his shirt away from her leg, making sure that it doesn’t get wet. 

He shuts the bedroom door behind him, and she wishes he wasn’t being polite. She wishes he was giving her new reasons to be mad now that the old ones are in the open air between them. 

Her hand is shaking too hard to get a good grip on the zipper on her lower back and she swears, spinning a couple of clumsy times trying to get a good grip while her teeth chatter at the breeze the motion causes. 

“Hiccup-p?” She calls after her third attempt fails, refusing to look as the old bedroom door hinges creak and he presumably sticks his head out. 

“Yeah?” 

“I can’t get the zipper,” she admits like a shameful secret and she can almost hear his startled expression. 

“Oh.” 

“Can you?” 

“Yeah, sure. Of course,” he crosses the room, stupid shiny shoes too quiet on the old wood floor, and then his warm fingers are brushing her back as he grabs the zipper and drags it carefully down, tine by tine. He sucks in a breath when it hits the bottom of the track and she pretends she didn’t hear, just like she’s pretending her heart isn’t quickening in her chest. “There.” 

“Thanks,” she breathes, keeping as perfectly still as she can while shivering until the bedroom door clicks shut again. 

She changes quickly, trying to ignore how his shirt smells like Hiccup under the veneer of fancy cologne as she buttons it up almost to the top. The back of her dress hadn’t let her wear anything on her upper body underneath it and she fidgets with the shirt, crossing and uncrossing her arms between making sure the length is covering everything. 

It is. Kind of. She can only hope that his gentlemanly behavior continues, as much as she hates it. Almost as much as she hates that she thought about Hiccup seeing her underwear under very different circumstances. Or not thought about it so much as thought about what her life might be if it were assumed. 

He’s right, the last few days it’s been so easy to reach for his hand, and she curses that too. 

She knocks on the door to signal that he can come out on her way to the kitchen, where she lights the gas stove with the lighter in the drawer next to it, before filling the kettle from the jug of water in the dark fridge. It takes him a moment to come out of the bedroom and when he does, she hears his feet stop short on a creaky floorboard and when she looks over her shoulder, he’s staring again, expression reserved, white undershirt showing a length of lean arm that feels surprisingly intimate with the storm swirling outside. 

“What?” 

“Nothing.” He shakes his head, running a hand through the hair that’s curling more after the snow melted on it. “Nothing. What are you doing away from the fire?” 

She wants to snap at him to stop taking care of her, but she’s warmer already and she hates the blunted edges on his face. And they’re stuck here, at least for the night. And there’s a wedding in the morning without a photographer and just like all week, she doesn’t have time or energy to fight with him. 

“Making hot cocoa, there are packets in the cupboard.” 

“Please, go get warm,” he waves her back towards the fire, “throw another log on, while you’re at it. There are plenty and the bedroom is still freezing.” 

“Those were supposed to last all through tomorrow night.” 

“I know where I can get more,” he gestures to the snowy forest outside, “please, just...I can make cocoa.” 

He’s saying ‘please’ a lot, and it sounds a lot like ‘sorry’. 

It also sounds like ‘please’ and she wishes she didn’t care. 

“Fine.” She tugs the hem of his shirt down over her underwear as she walks past, scooting the loveseat a couple of feet closer to the fire with her knee before sitting down, feet tucked underneath her and throw from the back of the couch over her lap. The shivering has finally slowed down and she’s sleepy in a way that makes her feel like she’s turning her back on an enemy. 

An enemy who’s decidedly not acting like an enemy. 

An enemy who sits down six inches away, even though he looks cold. 

An enemy who gives her a furtive side glance with too emerald eyes as he hands her a mug of cocoa with little freeze-dried marshmallows dissolving at the top.

“Thanks.” She gives him that, her feet inching subconsciously towards the warmth emanating off of him. He feels warmer than the fire and that’s impossible and she curses the fact that impossible things can’t happen. 

“Feeling warmer?” He glances at the dress she hung on the coat rack and the puddle underneath it and she pushes still damp hair behind her ear and nods, taking a scalding sip of cocoa. “Good. This is better than freezing to death in a stuck car, no matter how hard it was to get here.” 

And he’s trying. He’s searching her expression with careful eyes. And she hates that he asked why they aren’t still together. She hates that he tried so hard to help. 

She hates that it didn’t work out. 

She hates that she doesn’t know what she’s going back to. Where she’s going. What any of this means. That the business she fought so hard for is drowning and she can’t dive in after it. 

But she can’t do anything about that right now, trapped in a cabin with the man who used to be the boy who broke her heart and she holds out her hand. 

“Truce?” 

“Again?” He asks, but he shakes her hand anyway, his warm fingers like a drug reminding her that they’re all alone. “What about—”

“Your bad driving?” She asks, smiling when he relaxes, leaning away from her slightly and taking a sip of his cocoa. 

“Yeah, I forgot the road had that dip.” 

“How could you forget?” She lets herself think back. She lets herself press her frozen feet against his leg, sighing in relief when he winces at the cold. “Remember? You got a flat tire—”

“And we used that log lever to jack my car up?” He laughs, under his breath, deep in the chest she doesn’t quite recognize. It’s still Hiccup, absolutely, just broader and more sure of himself, not destined to trip over absolutely everything in his path. 

He sets his hand on her feet and it’s so warm she could scream or moan or curl up against him if any of those things were on this self-built table. 

“Yeah.” 

“It’s been so long since I was up here,” he takes another sip of cocoa, “I hope these are new packets…”

“They are,” she insists, a little sad, “I thought I was selling a package.” 

“What all does the package entail?” He asks, sheepish and guarded even as she remembers how he was hugging her earlier, how he was holding her hand, how warm his leg is under her feet. “Just, if I’m going to pitch it—”

“Marriage,” she says too loud then clears her throat and takes a sip of the cocoa that would be better made with milk, but there’s no milk, so it’s fine, “at the Manor. I am event planner, in the package. The photographer is separate, and I was hoping to help Larson photography but well…”

“Not now,” he mutters, and when he prompts her legs onto his lap so that his warm palms can slide up and down her calves, she doesn’t stop him. She just stares at the fire and waits for that internal alarm that this is a bad idea to go off. 

It doesn’t. 

He worries over the place where an iced over patch of snow scraped her calf. 

“The chairs, tables, and dishes are included for a party up to forty, we have rental accommodations for parties bigger than that, especially pending the heated tent in the back.” The tent that’s not going to happen. The tent that would only be necessary for crowds, or larger events. 

“What else?” Hiccup’s voice is low and he sips his drink, warm hand running up her shin but no further than her knee. 

“The cabin setup.” She waves at the room with her free hand. The firewood, authentic Berk fir in the corner, decorated for the holiday. The antique furniture that she refinished herself. 

The bed. In the other room. With the roses and candles and mints on the pillows. 

“Sounds like a deal.” Hiccup whispers as he sets down his empty mug, tugging the blanket tighter around her feet and she tries not to scowl. 

“You didn’t ask the price.” 

“Less than ‘getting your car snowed in and hunkering down for warmth’, I hope.” He laughs, always so willing to make fun of himself, just like he used to be, not like she makes him out to be in her head. 

“Reasonable.” She shrugs, settling down further into the couch. “It’s…reasonable.” 

“I’ll…”

She waits for him to promise to talk to his dad. She waits for him to do something, anything, but he’s staring again, hand curled around her foot. “If you ever need to get married, I’m sure your dad would allow it.” 

She wants it to sound bitter. She wants to be mad or something, but she’s only joking and attached and her legs on his lap are the warmest part of her and she envies them in a way she doesn’t understand. 

“Didn’t you hear Snotlout? I’m determined to die alone.” 

“He didn’t mean that,” she lets him have more of the blanket when he tugs on it, sliding down slightly in his seat to get most of his arms under the covers. “He’s just on edge because of tomorrow. His big day.” 

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t mean it,” he shivers, scooting a little closer, “it is Snotlout.” 

“True.” She can’t help the miserable expression that slides back onto her face as she loses interest in her cocoa and sets it aside, “and no one’s going to be there to photograph his big day.” 

“I’ll talk to my dad,” he insists and he’s so earnest and determined and _Hiccup_ that she scoots closer, hooking her knees across his. “Hi.” He says because he’s absurd. She’s closer, it’s natural to put her still cold arm around his neck. 

“I’m cold.”

“Must be the snow,” he jokes, red as he slides his arm around her waist, pulling her close. And he’s so warm and the fire is warm and she knows he’s leaving, so none of this matters, but he’s here right now. She said truce but she didn’t think what truce meant. “Hi.” 

“Cold,” she says again, like it explains her behavior and he pulls her closer. And this Is stupid, but like everything else with him, feels easy. 

“Yeah, you’re freezing,” he says, leaning back slightly, “maybe you should put on my jacket too.” 

“Right.” She swallows hard. 

That’s _Hiccup_ too, being so gentle and cautious and trying to take care of her, even when her dress is dripping a puddle onto the floor and the snow is drifting against the door. And it’s not real, he’s going to leave, and as much as she could forget that, even for a second, even to make this cold awkward night a little better, she shouldn’t. 

“Do you want to?” He asks like he’s reading her mind and she glares at him, arm stiff around the back of his neck. “Put on my jacket, I mean.” 

“Right.” She bites her lip and lets it go slowly, willing the moment to fade. The moment that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. “It’s late.” 

In all actuality, she has no idea what time it is, but he doesn’t disagree with her and she is tired enough to feel it in her bones. She doesn’t know if it’s because of stress or cold or fending off the dread that’s trying to surround the entire concept of her future, but it’s enough to make her yawn as she disentangles herself from Hiccup and stands up. 

The room is freezing and her toes curl in the damp rug as goosebumps break out across her skin. She crosses her arms and gestures at the bedroom with a nod of her head. 

“I’m going to fill up the hot water bottles in the bedroom and grab another blanket for the couch.” 

“The couch, yeah,” he sits up straighter, before leaning down to take off his shoes. “Don’t worry about too many blankets, I’ll have the fire, so…”

“Oh,” she tucks her hair behind her ear, shifting from frozen foot to frozen foot, the warmth of his lap leeching out of her impossibly fast, “it’s a short couch, I was offering—”

“I don’t mind—”

“I’m shorter.” 

“You’ll be more comfortable in the bed,” he offers, still trying not to offend her, as if that’s even possible at this point. As if she has the energy to be mad. As if she’s not losing her will not to dive back under that blanket with him every second she stands here. 

“You’ll hurt your back on the couch.” 

“My back will be fine,” he sighs, wiping a hand over his tired face, “and take both hot water bottles, I’ve got the fire.” 

“It’s kind of too late for the self-sacrificing thing to work on me,” she snaps, everything she said in his kitchen bouncing back to life and driving the temperature down further. “It’s a King,” she says quickly, in the name of the truce, “I’ll stick to my side and the room will be warmer.” 

“I can take the couch,” he stands up slowly, like his joints were frozen into place, and stretches his arms over his head, “but digging out the car might be easier after a good night’s sleep.” 

“Ok.” She waves him towards the bedroom and he helps her fill the two hot water bottles at the foot of the bed. She climbs under the covers on the side closer to the closet, back turned to him as he undoes his belt, pretending she doesn’t hear the soft whisk of his pants falling to the ground. The bed barely dips when he sits on the other edge to unstrap his leg and she squints her eyes shut when he sets it on the ground before pulling back the sheets and sliding underneath. 

He stays on his side and neither of them mention the mistletoe. 

Maybe he didn’t see it, it’s dark in here. 

But he was probably using his phone flashlight to look around, and the pop of red and green would be obvious. 

Either way, she determines that’s a rare point of awkward to be postponed until the morning and she presses her feet against the hot water bottle, willing herself to ignore the comforting sound of his breathing behind her. 

“Merry Christmas,” he whispers after a long pause and she looks over her shoulder at him, unsure if she heard him correctly. 

“What?” 

“Oh, I wasn’t sure if you were asleep or not but,” he holds up his phone, the screen bright enough to make her squint, “sorry,” he puts it down on the bedside table, “I just—I was checking to see if I had service, and I don’t, but it’s after midnight, so Merry Christmas.” 

“Oh,” she rolls onto her back, arms folded over the blankets as she stares blankly at the dark ceiling, his shirt crisp across her shoulders, cologne smell bleeding into the clean linen around them. “Merry Christmas.” 

“You too.” He clears his throat, “I mean I already said it, but—”

“What a way to start the holiday,” she whispers, daring to face him, one hand under her face as she tries to make out his expression in the dark. 

He smiles, teeth glinting in the moonlight sifting through the still falling snow, “I’ve had worse.” 

“Oh?” She asks accidentally, swallowing hard when he scoots a little closer to the center of the bed with a shiver. 

“I mean, idyllic snowy cottage, fire in the fireplace, hot cocoa.” His eyes flick across her face, “you.” 

“Hiccup—”

“The mistletoe does seem to be stalking us though,” he points up at the headboard and she blushes. 

“You saw that, huh?” 

“Given that I don’t think we’ll survive any more bad luck,” his hand lands on her cheek, thumb brushing her hair back, “I don’t think we can ignore mistletoe on Christmas.” 

He leans in, gentle fingertips tilting her chin, eyes locked on hers until the last second when they flick to her lips and his tongue darts out to wet his own. His breath smells like cocoa and her hand lands on his against her face, memorizing how it feels even as she opens her mouth. 

“We shouldn’t.” 

“Oh.” He freezes, nose brushing across hers when he shrugs, swallowing hard and pulling back six inches that might as well be miles. When he pulls his hand back, she shivers, tucking her own arm back under the covers. “Sorry, I just thought—”

“It’s fine,” she rolls over, back to him again, well on her side of the bed. “Goodnight.” 

“Yeah…” He clears his throat and she thinks he’s going to say something else, but his sigh is defeated, “goodnight.” 

It’s a long time before she manages to drift off. 


	11. Chapter 11

When Hiccup wakes up, all he sees is blonde. 

Astrid, he knows immediately, and he chases the part of this that he thinks is a dream. Her body tucked against his, his arms around her waist, feet tangled together. His borrowed shirt rucked up over her hip so that his arm is resting against bare skin. Her heartbeat against his chest, in time with his. 

It takes a moment for the other sensations to make themselves known. The cold room, his half numb nose that he must have tucked into her hair to warm. The asymmetrical soreness in his legs from a hike through thigh deep snow in impractical shoes. His still asleep hand from the weight of her head on his arm. 

The bone deep ache in his chest because she didn’t kiss him. 

The last realization throbs like a wound and he holds her closer like she’s the balm, nose resting on the nape of her neck, above the collar of his shirt. She mumbles something in her sleep, arching against him, hand falling to rest on his arm. She wouldn’t want him holding her like this and the realization sends a stab of pain through his chest. 

She was right last night. He hasn’t thought of her since he left, because there’s no way he could even attempt to kid himself about how he felt. When he was eighteen, distraction was easy, and then it became habit, and he didn’t notice that he’d lost track of home. 

Home doesn’t sound like Berk, the entire town bustling around in the snow, cutting down trees while the flakes pile up. Home doesn’t sound like his dad or car tires crunching through ice. 

Home sounds like Astrid’s gentle snores, the crinkle of sheets as she adjusts, rubbing her cold feet over his. Home sounds like her slow, even breathing, the rustle of her hair on the sheets. 

And she didn’t kiss him. She didn’t let him kiss her. 

He never knew that leaving home would mean that someday, home could refuse to allow him back. 

It takes a brutal minute to disentangle himself, trying not to touch her or kiss her hair or wake her up. His heart almost beats out of his chest when she instantly rolls into his warm place, arm sweeping across the sheets like she’s looking for him. He pulls the blankets back up to her neck and sits on the edge of the bed to put his leg on, trying not to think about the fact that he’s not used to problems that can’t be fixed. 

He gets dressed, or at least he puts his pants back on, and checks his phone for service. No luck yet, but it’s already after eight and the wedding is at four, so Astrid really needs to get back down to the house. 

The cabin is nicer than it ever was when he was growing up, cleaner and more functional, but that means it takes him a while to guess where a shovel might be. He doesn’t really want to try the shed out back, it’s usually locked and he’d have to wake Astrid to ask for the key, and he’s half hoping to have the car dug out by the time she wakes up, so that maybe they can avoid the awkward morning-after-nothing dance. 

She’s had plenty of opportunities to kiss him this week and taken none of them. She’s nothing if not direct. Last night was confusing, the isolation, the exhaustion, the nostalgia, the fact that she was freezing and likely wants to keep her toes. 

He finally finds a small extendable shovel in the storage closet off of the kitchen, and grabs it too quickly, wincing when the box it was propped against falls onto the floor, the lid popping off. He waits to hear Astrid move for a moment, but when the bedroom is silent, he bends down to assess the damage. 

It’s his mom’s camera. The polaroid she carried everywhere, the culprit behind the photo albums and the naked baby picture and the prom photo. The rest of the box is full of unopened film and he sets it on the table, picking up the camera and inspecting it. It had half a roll of film in it and he snaps one picture of the kitchen to test it out. 

Even though the battery in the cartridge should have been dead years ago, a picture pops out and he waves it absently, watching the cabinets and kettle appear on the film. 

A phone rings. 

Not his, because his is in his pocket, but another, its sound uncomfortably grounding when he realizes it’s going to wake Astrid up and she’s going to look at him, either angry or confused or apologetic or ignoring what happened, and he’s not ready for any of that. He trips on the edge of the rug on the way to the coat rack, digging in her pocket to find it and barely registering ‘Eret’ on the caller ID before picking up. 

“Hello?” He whispers, voice hoarse until he clears his throat. 

“Hiccup?” Eret asks, obviously incredulous and Hiccup sighs. 

“Guilty.” 

“Why are you answering Astrid’s phone?” 

“Because she’s still asleep,” he leans back to peek into the bedroom, making sure that’s true and wishing he’d shut the door in the first place. “What’s up?” 

“Just, I don’t know, my fiancé happens to be wondering where the hell his wedding planner is the morning of his wedding,” Eret’s chuckle is tense, “I paraphrased, he told me to quote him directly, but well, I don’t necessarily want Astrid’s boot up his ass today.” 

“Oh.” Hiccup clears his throat, stepping out onto the front step and shivering in his undershirt. Because Astrid is wearing his shirt. “I’m working on it. We got stuck on the road to the cabin and ended up spending the night.” 

“Oh?” Eret asks and Hiccup hates the implication almost as much as he hates that it doesn’t apply to anything. 

“Yeah, so if we could get some help digging out, that’d be great.” 

“Sure, I’ll head that way in the Jeep.” 

“Thanks,” Hiccup hangs up after Eret does, tucking Astrid’s phone back in her jacket pocket and looking for his shoes. 

They’re by the couch, where he left them. Where she put her feet on his lap and pulled herself close and he thought that their fight had done something to clear the air. And she’s wearing his shirt and he’s cold enough to wonder what she’d do if he crawled back in bed with her. 

She might let him. That might be worse than her kicking him out. If she let him cuddle because it’s cold and she’s polite and feels like she owes him. 

He gets bundled up and heads for the shovel, but the camera catches his eye. 

It’s an ancient film roll, there’s no chance that it’ll still work but he picks it up anyway, pacing carefully to the doorway of the bedroom and looking at Astrid. She’s asleep, blankets pulled up below her arm, which is curled under her face, his shirt evident, blonde everywhere. It matters more than the prom picture, even more of a snapshot in time where he wishes so badly that things could be different. 

He holds up the camera and snaps a single picture, the improbable flash shining on her like a true Christmas miracle. 

He grabs the picture that comes out as soon as he can, right about the time that she stirs, nose crinkling as she leans up on an elbow, the buttons of his shirt pulling teasingly tight. 

“What’s up?” She asks, squinting at him before pulling the blankets up to her chin. 

“Um,” he tucks the picture into his pocket, “Eret called you, he’s coming to help dig up the car.” He shows her the camera, “and it’s not a DSLR but I did find my Mom’s old polaroid so…” 

“Ok,” she sags back into the bed, pillow seam on her forehead, grogginess sounding like home. “I’ll be out in a minute.” 

“I found a shovel, I’ll go get digging.” He promises, “you just…you can take your time, it’s fine.” He knows she won’t listen, but it matters to say it, especially when he’s remembering how good she felt in his arms. 

“Yeah.” She sits up, her hair a mess, her eyes bleary, and she shivers when she feels the cold morning air, tugging the blankets tighter around herself. He wants to warm her up, more than last night, more than he’s ever wanted anything. More than he wanted freedom a decade ago when he didn’t understand what Astrid meant to him. 

He bites his lip, swallowing against a dry, numb throat. 

“Meet you at the car.” 

By the time he gets through their largely snowed in trail, Eret is already at his SUV, shoveling a food wide channel around it in the snow. Hiccup nods in greeting, adding his own shovel to the effort and trying not to notice how much less he’s scooping with every motion. 

“Astrid still sleeping?” Eret asks, freeing the deepest front tire, and Hiccup scowls, focusing on his own digging. 

“She’s awake.” 

“But you two—”

“Nope.” Hiccup cuts him off before he can say it, “we got stuck in the snow and took shelter in the cabin.” 

“Right.” Eret digs methodically and Hiccup scowls at his boots and how obviously better outfitted for this that he is. 

“Nothing else happened.” He doesn’t defend himself so much as prime the record. “Astrid eventually made it pretty clear she didn’t want it to.” 

Eret pauses and opens his mouth and Hiccup cuts him off with a shovelful of snow from the other front tire. 

“Isn’t it your wedding day?” 

“I’m searching for distractions.” Eret says, and he sounds like he means it. 

“I think I’m going to leave,” Hiccup voices the thought that’s existed between all other trains, hacking a little harder at the ice around the front tire. “I can’t—when she—she—yeah…”.

“She’s having a hard week,” Eret tries but Hiccup cuts him off with a sad smile. 

“And I’m making it worse. It’s kind of a talent of mine. I should get out of her hair.” 

“You know,” Eret puts his shovel back into his jeep, grabbing a bag of kitty litter to sprinkle under the tires of Hiccup’s SUV, “I’ve been trying to set Astrid up for years, and no one has ever stuck. I always thought she was caught up on someone.” 

“You’d have to ask her.” Hiccup gets in before getting into the car and testing the accelerator. It takes a couple of tries to get the tires to catch and then he’s driving carefully backwards to the widening in the road where he can turn around. Once he does Eret knocks on his window. 

“You waiting for Astrid?” 

“Actually,” he shifts in the seat, “would you mind giving her a ride? I have to talk to my dad, and it might be easier without her there.” 

“Easier for who?” Eret asks and Hiccup wonders who filled him in as he shrugs. 

“My dad, probably, best to not corner him. Doesn’t work well.” 

“Will you be there when we’re down?” Eret asks, and Hiccup feels the same protectiveness of her that he was shocked to feel from Snotlout last night. 

“Probably.” He’s honest and Eret is unimpressed. 

“Ok.” 

He rolls the window up and heads back down the hill, not taking it as easy as he should given the night before. Eret’s Jeep left decent tracks to follow, and really, the least he could do is talk sense into his dad before Astrid gets there. 

The house is crawling with people when he gets there and he parks the closest he can get, going over points to himself as he walks through the front door. He doesn’t get a chance for a last minute reiteration because his dad is right there, looking at him with happy expectation that echoes Eret’s and nags at the throbbing wound in his chest. 

“You should let Astrid use the house as a venue,” he dives right in, clearing his throat, “no, more than that, you should let Astrid transform this house into a venue.” 

“Son—”

“No, listen to me.” Hiccup forces himself even, “I came here this Christmas with every intention of doing everything I could to convince you to sell. And I know you don’t care about money, it’s not even about the money—” He starts over, “I know I haven’t been around. But Astrid has, and she sees this place in a way I never have. She sees this house, she sees Berk, and that means she wants to show it to people. It’s…somehow she’s managed to combine a dream of having something that’s hers and maintaining what’s yours.” 

“Hiccup,” his dad sighs, “I don’t think you understand—”

“No, you don’t understand.” Hiccup isn’t the one who has to deal with the fallout, but he’s also the one who has refused to deal with the stagnation. “No matter how much you try, Berk is going to change. It’s already happening, and if this place isn’t a part of that change, it won’t survive. And if there’s an option to change it without changing it, to recycle parts of it to support the rest, especially when someone like Astrid is willing to carry it through…” He swallows hard, lost in his lack of a point and his insistence towards it. 

Or no, not lack. His point is Astrid and she doesn’t want him pointing at her, but that doesn’t mean he can just stop. His compass just found North again after years of spinning and it points to this room. To this moment. To what he can do right now to make her like better. 

“She loves this place. And she’s willing to work so hard to make it survive. She’s always working so hard for everyone else,” Hiccup clears his throat, “maybe it’s time that someone worked for her. Maybe it’s time someone made things easier for her.” 

His dad looks torn, beard whiter than Hiccup has ever seen it, dark circles under his eyes, and Hiccup waits for the inevitable no. 

“I have an idea,” Astrid’s voice pipes up behind him and she’s biting her lip, messy braid over her shoulder, coat buttoned entirely over the dress she had to put back on. She’s holding the polaroid camera that he found at the cabin, “you’re right, parties these days are overwhelming. They’re all doing so much, they’re about making appearances instead of being with the ones you love. People are all trying to pay to pose this perfect moment that they can edit later to pretend it was better than it was.” 

The hole in his chest stings like she’s pouring salt in it and he wonders what she’s been trying to rewrite. 

“I bet…the whole draw, you know, is that Berk is off the beaten path but not too far,” she sets holds the camera up and snaps a picture of the tree, the ‘Congratulations Eret and Snotlout’ banner hung above it. She starts shaking it as soon as it comes out, handing it over to his dad when the picture starts to appear. “It’s a place to get away from everything, even just for a weekend. For a party or for a wedding that’s about being with the ones you love, not posing. The Polaroid Package. No hashtags, no forced candids, no checking-in.” 

His dad stares at the picture, “is that Val’s camera?” 

“I found it at the cabin,” Hiccup nods, “Christmas Miracle that the film still works. A Christmas Wedding Miracle, maybe…”

“Is Astrid here yet?” Snotlout stalks into the room, hair wet, eyes wide and panicked until he sees Astrid. “Oh thank God, you’re so late. I’m getting married today. Is that a polaroid camera? I always knew Hiccup was a hipster.” 

“Just a second, Snot,” Astrid clears her throat, “I’ll be right up.” 

“What’s going on?” He looks at Hiccup, specifically, and Hiccup is glad that Snotlout won’t want bruised knuckles in his low-resolution wedding pictures. 

Astrid’s speech was way better than his and he hopes it works. He hopes for a miracle. 

“Astrid and I were just…discussing her business proposal,” his father breaks the silence and hands the picture in his hand back to her, “I think this is good for the promotional material. I’d like to vet the website—”

“What?” Astrid’s eyes widen and she nearly drops the camera, fumbling it at the last second before handing it absently to Hiccup, like she expects him to be there, and his heart throbs. “Are you saying—”

“Let’s try it. Old-fashioned, low—” His dad starts, abruptly cut off when Astrid hugs him, throwing her arms around his neck, feet off of the ground. “Now, now, don’t you have a wedding to throw?” 

“I do,” she kisses him on the cheek, easy affection that makes Hiccup feel three inches tall and too small to contain his pride. “I won’t let you down, this will—it’ll be great. It’ll set us apart, it’ll—”

“Can I come in?” Eret asks from outside, “I also have to get ready.” 

“Fuck,” Snotlout hisses, jogging towards the stairs, “he can’t see me, I haven’t done my eye-mask, I’m puffy! I knew I shouldn’t have had coffee after seven, fuck!” 

“I’ve got to go help him into his tux.” She excuses herself, looking seriously at his dad again, “I promise, you won’t regret this.” 

It’s too quiet after she’s disappeared upstairs and Eret clears his throat outside. 

“Come in,” Hiccup coughs, face going impossibly redder when Eret casually hands him his button up shirt, “oh.” 

“I was going to get ready in your room,” Eret says slowly, “but I’m assuming you need to pack.” 

“Use the guest room on the third floor,” Hiccup’s dad offers, “third door on the right at the top of the stairs.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Pack?” His dad asks as Eret walks away and Hiccup shrugs. 

“I think…I should go. Merry Christmas, and it was great to see you, but I’ve got to get back to my real life.” Even Hiccup can tell it sounds fake and he sighs, “Easter, maybe? Maybe you could fly out…”

“If you’re leaving,” his dad looks at the shirt in his hands, “what was all that about?” 

“Making things right,” he shrugs, “or trying to. I’m going to go pack, so…”.

Hiccup’s dad knows he can’t stop him, but that’s disappointing too, in its way. 

“You missed secret Santa last night,” his dad hands him the poorly wrapped scarf and it might as well weigh a thousand pounds, “might want to deliver this personally.” 

“Right.” 

Hiccup almost packs the scarf. It would fit in his carry on, considering how little he brought with him. He thought this was a quick trip, a wedding to suffer through amid a series of hard conversations with his dad. He thought he’d see Astrid for an awkward slow dance, and she’d look like high school through nostalgia goggles that he’d forget as soon as she was out of sight. 

She didn’t make it to his house before he left for college. 

She knew about early graduation, of course, but he didn’t tell her he was starting in the spring semester until Thanksgiving. She was working and he said he’d call later and he did, but she didn’t pick up and then it was phone tag and a year later when she mentioned something about seeing other people it didn’t seem like news. 

He jumps at the knock on his door, expecting his dad and one of his legendary pep talks that breaks down to ‘do what I say or else my vague disappointment will mount into persistent distaste’, but of course, it’s Astrid. She’s wearing a vaguely oversized flannel and jeans instead of the dress and she finally looks warm, freshly scrubbed cheeks pink and braid still tangled over her shoulder. 

“Hey.” He pretends he doesn’t see her notice the suitcase. Her eyebrows knit together and she tucks her tangled bangs behind her ear. 

“Hi, I just…I wanted to say, I heard the end of what you said down there, and I really appreciate it.” She starts talking and he keeps packing so that she can’t see his face. He tosses his toiletries into the bag and she takes a hesitant step into the room, bare foot creaking on the old boards. “Are you leaving?” 

“Yeah.” He looks up at her just long enough to gauge her reaction, and her set jaw and wide eyes aren’t what he expects. They’re worse. Acceptance and something sad that doesn’t make sense swirling together in liquid blue that she can’t shut off from him, even though the rest of her face is trying. 

“Before the wedding?” 

“Yeah.” 

Her smile is sad, but it reaches her eyes, and she’s the woman who was cold in a cabin, feet on his lap as she talked about high school bad driving and drank crappy cocoa. 

“Snotlout will be devastated,” she sighs, “he really wanted to upstage you when he walks down the aisle.” 

“I’ll send an expensive present,” he promises, “it’s what I should have done anyway.” 

“Oh.” She crosses her arms, mouth working silently a couple of times before she decides against saying anything else. 

“Speaking of presents,” he reaches for the scarf and holds it out to her, “we missed secret Santa last night. I got you.” 

“Just my luck,” her smile tightens, but she holds the present a little closer to her chest, crossing her arms over it. 

“It’s the scarf,” he tells her, verbal vomit, “the red one that handsy Eunice was selling. The one Abby thought was pretty. She was right.” 

“Hiccup,” her voice breaks across his name and he thinks of how her cheek felt under her hand, how she felt against him this morning, how she looked last night, stubborn and cold and not willing to be irritated with him. 

“I…the wedding is going to be great. Better without me ruining those un-editable pictures.” He thinks back to that first night, being in her shot and saying all the wrong things, and he can at least stop those even if he can’t stop wanting to kiss her. “I’ve got to get to the airport.” 

He hasn’t booked his tickets yet. He still doesn’t have service after the storm. 

“Oh.” She hugs the scarf a little tighter and shakes her head, “yeah, I wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.” 

“Yeah.” He nods at her, feeling exposed in his undershirt under his suit jacket, the shirt that smells like her tucked into his suitcase, next to his laundry bag. “I hope I helped with my dad. I fucked up with the camera—”

“No,” she takes a step closer, “I think this will work, it’s…nostalgic.” 

“Well, people love that crap, right?” He’s never hated his own voice so much, never noticed how hollow he can sound. “Christmas miracle film and the ghost of weddings past.” He swallows hard, “when marriages lasted and people had integrity and…what?” He asks when her look turns into staring, like she wishes she’d get off of the stage. 

Snotlout’s stage. 

Her stage. 

“Have a good flight,” she means it and his heart drops further, “thanks for the scarf.” 

“Merry Christmas,” he says, trying not to think of last night, and then her arm is around his shoulders, badly wrapped present between them, her nose tucked into his neck. Her hair smells like woodsmoke and Astrid and he squints his eyes shut for a second, patting her back. 

“I didn’t get you anything.” She pulls back. “I got Ruffnut for secret Santa.” The wall is back in front of her eyes, but her smile is open, a little hopeful, prettier than he can tolerate. “She got babysitting coupons and I think I’m going to regret it.” 

Flights are cheaper on Christmas day. No one wants to travel because everyone wants to be with their families. He’s surprised to recognize someone at the gate, and even more surprised to see Gustav, the photographer who ruined everything. 

“…crushed the camera but I’ve still got a memory card full of shots.” 

“Berk, though? I know we’ve got intel from that chimney in Montana but Berk?” One of his companions asks and Hiccup has let enough go unsaid and muddled today to not listen in. “It’s such a nowhere town—”

“Where else would Chris Kringle relocate after the invention of smartphones? Very far from the nearest cell tower,” Gustav insists, and Hiccup glances at his laptop screen to see him clicking through pictures of his dad and kids from the Ice Skating Fundraiser, “not the North Pole where GPS satellites and compasses are constantly monitoring.” 

“Where are the elves, then?” 

“I don’t know, but they’re hot,” he clicks another photo and it’s Astrid at Snowglobes, too uncomfortable for words, her eyebrows knit together in a strong, flat line. 

Gustav is lucky enough to be seated one row ahead of Hiccup on the plane and Hiccup is lucky enough to have to use the bathroom halfway through the flight, precisely when Gustav falls asleep in the aisle seat. Hiccup is lucky that there’s no turbulence when he reaches over to pluck the memory card out of the side of Gustav’s laptop, tucking it carefully into his pocket and finding the polaroid he forgot about. 

That picture of Astrid is better. All messy blonde and sleepy contented expression. Her arm in his shirt curled over the blankets in the cabin that felt like theirs, for a second. 

His apartment is empty when he gets there, the ghost of Astrid solely in his mind, uninterested in the plain, sunny walls and the absolute lack of glitter. He hasn’t had a tree in this place, ever, but now he sees where one would go, in the empty corner by the West window. 

His phone starts buzzing, work e-mails coming in faster than they can load, blank lines stacking up as he checks the time, realizing that the wedding is starting. He sits down at his laptop, intending to pull up Snotlout’s registry and buy about half a dozen expensive presents, but then he remembers the memory card in his pocket. 

He plugs it in and starts sifting through photos, trying to make sense of the theme until he gets to the last picture, the request from the National Enquirer. ‘Finding Santa Claus: Breaking and Entering in a Digital Age’. 

He laughs out loud, and the sound echoes in his empty, too big place. His work e-mail beeps again, and again, and he silences his phone, staring at the lack of tree and wishing he could tell Astrid about this. 


	12. Chapter 12

“Wait,” Snotlout tries to leap out of his chair as Astrid attempts to comb his hair and she shoves him back down with a hand on his shoulder. “Hiccup left?” 

“Yep.” Astrid refuses to think about it, planning camera angles and re-hashing the single article on polaroid photography she had time to read on the way down from the cabin, “sit still, you have a cowlick.” 

“That’s because my hair got half dry from my shower before you got here, and—” Snotlout clenches his fists on his lap and sighs, “no, not important, not going to be in HD anymore, have to focus on expressiveness.” He takes a deep breath, “Hiccup left?” He asks, exaggerated emotion feeding the ball in her throat. 

“Yep.” 

“Didn’t you guys—”

“Nope!” She cuts him off, trying not to think of this morning, pretending to be asleep so that she didn’t have to shove Hiccup off of her. 

“But Eret said,” he holds up his phone and she snatches it away, “hey!”

“You’re talking to Eret? It’s the morning of your wedding, that’s against tradition.” 

“Yeah, so is giving my wedding planner and best maid relationship counseling before I—Snotlout Jorgenson—commit to a single penis forever.” He insisted on wearing the same sash while getting ready and she stares at the reflection of the pink cursive in the mirror. “And it’s just texting, no pictures or anything.” 

“It’s not relationship counseling if there’s no relationship.” Astrid resorts to hair gel to make the cowlick stand down. If only she could guarantee that no one was going to be looking at the top of his head, but alas. “No texting Eret.” 

“What happened last night?” Snotlout asks, adjusting the moisturizing eye mask pads under his eyes. 

She shrugs, half-wondering how she got to the point that Snotlout gives her relationship advice. She knows it’s not high school anymore, but when she thinks about Hiccup, that feels impossible. 

“Nothing.” 

“Oh, you just got snowed in a cabin with him and borrowed his shirt for some reason—”

“I was soaked from the snow.” She pats his shoulders, “your hair is done.” 

“And it’ll last through the reception?” He inspects himself in the mirror, pulling his eye pads off and reaching for his moisturizer with shaking hands. “Are you sure?” 

“Depending on what you do.” She pats his shoulders and moves back to straighten her Best Maid dress where it’s hanging on the wardrobe. “I’ll leave so you can change.” 

“Hey, it’s my wedding day, and as the groom—”

“One of two grooms.” 

“The more important groom—and don’t judge me for saying that, ask Eret, he’ll give me this especially given my intent, but as the most important groom and therefore person on this Christmas day,” Snotlout stands up and straightens his sash, “what happened with you and Hiccup?” 

“Well,” she sets her jaw, thinking about the unopened scarf on the chair in the corner, “you asked, but…we almost kissed.” 

“You almost kissed Hiccup? The night before my wedding?” 

“You asked!” She ignores the heat in her cheeks, “and I didn’t do it, I knew it was a bad idea—"

“I knew if Hiccup came around, it would be all about him.” He starts triple checking his jawline for patches he missed shaving. 

“Well, it’s not now, since he left, like I knew he would, so can you just drop it?” She grabs her dress and pats down the plastic dry cleaner bag. “I’m going to go change.” 

“Did you want him to stay?” He asks and she avoids eye contact, staring at the wall and going over polaroid photography facts in her head. “Did you ask?” 

“Did I ask what?” 

“If he’d stay?” 

“Get your tux on.” She changes in the bathroom, ignoring her reflection and trying not to think about getting dressed this morning, shivering in the cold cabin, struggling to reach her own zipper. 

“Astrid!” Abby surprises her in the hallway, giggling in her flower girl dress, her braids a mess as she hugs Astrid around the waist. 

“Did your mom do your hair?” Astrid asks as Ruffnut appears at the top of the stairs. 

“We’re early, you can fix it.” 

“Where’s Hiccup?” Abby asks, chin digging into Astrid’s hip. 

“Oh. Um.” She looks at Ruffnut, not quite for help, maybe more for forgiveness, “he actually had to go back to San Diego at short notice.” 

“No,” Abby pulls back, “he’s supposed to be here. It’s Christmas.” 

“I know, Abs, it was an emergency.” An emergency to get away from her, or Berk, or she doesn’t even know. An emergency to prove her right when it hurts. 

“You don’t understand,” Abby points at the stairs, “Mr. Haddock said he’d tell Santa to get Hiccup to stay. I wanted you to have a boyfriend for Christmas and Mr. Haddock said he’d tell Santa it should be Hiccup!” 

“Oh.” Astrid looks at Ruffnut for help and Ruffnut panicks for a second before squatting to her daughter’s eye level. 

“Mr. Haddock doesn’t really know Santa.” 

“He said he did!” Abby stomps, shrugging Ruffnut’s hands off. “He said he’d tell Santa that Hiccup should be Astrid’s Christmas boyfriend!” 

“Hey, Abby,” Astrid waits until she has Abby’s attention to continue, “you know, Christmas magic only goes so far, ok? It can’t make choices for people, people have to do that themselves.” 

“And you did get that bike,” Ruffnut reminds her daughter, nodding, “so Santa did listen.” 

“It’s Hiccup who didn’t,” Astrid finishes under her breath, ignoring the way that Ruffnut’s eagle eyes snap to hers. “Go see Snotlout, he’ll fix your hair, ok?” 

“It’s my wedding day!” Snotlout snaps from the other room and Astrid glares at the door. 

“You’re anxious, braid some hair and I’ll get you a drink!” She responds as Abby enters the bedroom. The bridal suite. The room that might still be a bridal suite because of Hiccup’s speech buying her time. 

And because of its contents. 

How could he talk like that about her and still leave? How could he believe she’s that capable and driven and _right_ and still leave? 

“I’ve got to get him a drink.” Astrid shoulders past Ruffnut on her way down the stairs, jeans and shirt still folded under her arm. 

“Cool, I could use one too, given my daughter is about to walk down the aisle without her dad there—”

“Don’t use the dead husband thing on me right now,” Astrid turns to poke her in the chest, “do not—”

“Hiccup left?” Ruffnut asks, surprised but uncharacteristically quiet. “I figured when you guys were gone last night—”

“Yeah, he left.” Astrid pours Snotlout something from one of the dustier bottles in the liquor cabinet, figuring that Stoick won’t care right now. 

“But you didn’t—”

“He was going to leave,” she shakes her head, “so no. I didn’t necessarily go through the paces of lo—” She stops herself before it can go too far, skimming a sip off of the top of Snotlout’s drink before heading back towards the stairs, “liking him just so that he could break it again when he inevitably left.” 

“Break what?” Ruffnut asks, too soft, and Astrid looks at the wedding ring hanging at her throat. 

Her brother’s was the first wedding she ever planned. It was last minute, he was shipping out soon and they’d just heard about Abby. She was home for the summer from college and Hiccup wasn’t and there was something magical about forcing all the vendors to come together to make something beautiful. There was something about the day, the rush of it, the convergence. 

“My trust.” 

“Did he say why?” Ruffnut pushes, smiling slightly at the sound of Snotlout almost patiently telling Abby to stay still, because this Christmas is actually about him just a little more than everyone else other than her. 

“Work. I don’t know. Life.” She shrugs, “my life is drawing me back too. I was distracted.” 

“Did you ask him to stay?” 

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Astrid holds up the glass in her hand, “the groom needs this.” 

“You didn’t.” 

“No,” she admits and for the first time it seems like an option. What would he have said? Does it matter? “I can’t make his decisions for him.” 

“When you don’t even ask, that’s exactly what you’re doing.” 

Astrid hates when Ruffnut sounds wise. It doesn’t fit her. Even less than mostly responsible single mom mask, in fact. She hates it almost as much as Abby’s perfect braids, rendering her what feels like useless as she waits for the wedding. 

It goes as close to perfectly as a wedding can go. The candids turn out great, Eret shoving cake in Snotlout’s face, Snotlout’s rage. Eret cutting in on the Mother-Son dance. 

Stoick vets the pictures with care and Astrid gets most of them scanned in after she gives the newlyweds a ride to the airport. They don’t mention the cabin being messy and she almost wishes Eret weren’t giving her so much of a break. 

Almost. 

She doesn’t want to think about the cabin. 

In the next hazy week, Astrid spends most of her time on the launch and the subsequent planning of the proof of concept. A Y2k20 party where phones are checked at the door. The attendance is resounding, at least a few dozen people in town planning to entertain a handful of relatives willing to leave technology behind for a night. 

The group is bigger than forty, and they’re all willing to pay the cover. Big enough that she has to open up the upstairs, buying a few CRTs at the pawn shop to set up additional screens to watch the ball drop. Between that and the bag of unused disposable cameras she finds at the back of the clearance shelf at Berk Drug Store, the house feels a little like going back in time to the 90s, rather than its usual 1890s. 

By nine o’clock, the house is bustling, the flash of disposable cameras blinding laughing people every few seconds. 

Abby runs down the stairs, camera held over her head as she winds through the crowd to where Astrid is refilling the table of champagne flutes off of the kitchen. 

“Astrid?” Abby sing-songs, voice turning whiny enough that she checks the time, “I want to look at the pictures.” 

“Oh,” Astrid takes the disposable and checks that it’s full, “I’ve got to get them developed, hun, I’ll put your name on it and make sure they get back to you.”

“So before bed?” She asks just as Ruffnut finds them in the kitchen. 

“Considering bed is now, not three to five business days from now, probably not kiddo.” 

“Business days?” Abby asks, clearly trying to draw the conversation away from ‘bedtime’. 

“I’ll tell you in the car,” Ruff offers and Abby pouts. 

“I don’t _want_ to go to bed. I want to see the balls drop.” 

“Gonna be a couple years,” Ruffnut mutters under her breath, looking at Astrid for a laugh and getting a delayed unenthusiastic smile. “Nothing? Come on, I’ve spent all night thinking about drinking champagne, I thought I’d be funny by now.” 

“Sorry,” Astrid says absently, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Do you need help out to the car?” 

“I don’t want to _go_ ,” Abby sniffs, a little teary eyed and Astrid bites her lip. 

“You know, she could go to sleep in one of the guest rooms upstairs, I think it’s pretty quiet on the third floor.” 

“Thanks, but I think we should head out.” Ruffnut pats Abby on the shoulder, mom-voice coming out full force. “Go get your coat.” 

“ _Mom—_ ”

“Abigail Hofferson.” She warns and the little girl looks at Astrid one last time for help that isn’t there before sulking off towards the coat closet. “Really though, tonight was fun. I didn’t realize I needed a break from my phone.” 

“Great, yeah.” Astrid puts the half bottle of champagne back in the fridge and picks up a flute, swirling it around and watching the bubbles stick to the sides of the glass. “Thanks.” 

“Yeah, thanks for the fun night, I hope Abby’s good to drive home because I’m actually sloshed.” 

“Right.” She nods, “roads should be better.” 

“Astrid,” Ruffnut knocks her fist against Astrid’s arm, “are you paying attention to anything I’m saying?” 

“You’re headed home.” She thinks back and winces, “and you said Abby was driving because you’re drunk, didn’t you?” 

“Which I’m not, it was just a test that you failed.” Ruffnut looks back into the living room but there’s no sign of Abby yet, meaning she probably got distracted by something. Usually it would be cause to follow up the threat of a first and last name reprimand but Ruffnut leans a little closer to Astrid instead and whispers. “Have you heard from Hiccup?” 

“Why would I have heard from Hiccup?” Saying his name is like picking a scab she keeps hoping is almost healed. 

“Just asking—”

“I haven’t. I didn’t last time he left either.” 

“Well, have you talked to him?” Ruffnut touches her wedding ring again and Astrid pretends not to notice. “I’m not trying to nag—”

“Great accidental job.” Astrid takes another sip from her flute and looks around for something else to do. 

“You know how I feel,” Ruffnut leaves it at that, “and I saw how you were last week—”

“And how was that?” 

“Present,” Ruffnut shrugs, “you were stressed but at least trying to interact…” 

“I’ll get Abby’s pictures developed and let you know when they’re done.” She puts the disposable camera in the pocket that feels so empty without her phone. 

“Thanks,” Ruffnut gives her one of those disconcerting Mom hugs, like she’s disappointed but loves Astrid anyway, “Happy New Year.” 

“You too.” 

It’s a good time for Ruffnut to leave, because the party is getting a little louder. A little rowdier. Stoick is pulling out an ancient karaoke machine that Astrid remembers borrowing from him for her dad’s fiftieth birthday party a few years ago. It turns on with a static screech through the old speakers and a flash of disposable cameras rises with the laugh. Fishlegs is coming through on his promise to pour shots for a couple of dollars apiece and Astrid waves in thanks from across the room. 

Someone breaks a glass during their impromptu karaoke. Astrid cleans it up, briefly interrupting with the vacuum. Stoick tries to get her to sing, but she manages to escape after sacrificing Tuffnut, who’s drunk enough to be even more enthusiastic than normal as he managed to get the night off of work. 

She starts the dishes and helps people dig out a parked in car. 

By eleven, she’s really missing her phone. 

She feels like she’s sneaking into the mudroom serving as coat closet and phone check combination, checking over her shoulder before grabbing her phone out of its slot and replacing it with the number in her pocket. She wishes she hadn’t taken the first slot now, but people are probably drunk enough not to notice at this point. 

She’s halfway up the stairs when the glass clinking behind her gets her attention, and she hides her back pocket as she turns around to see what everyone is cheering for. 

Stoick clears his throat, “before she goes to find something else to fix,” he pauses for a laugh that’s louder than it should be, and Astrid flushes, taking a backwards step up the stairs, “I just wanted to congratulate Astrid on this party, all the parties this week really, I’m sure lots of you remember the wedding…maybe not right now but…anyway, moving into the new year, Hofferson Events will be working out of the Haddock Manor for plenty of events like these. Business cards are by the door and think of us first when you need somewhere and someone to host your family.” 

People applaud. Astrid thanks them, nodding politely, even as it feels oddly empty. 

She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Hiccup, but that’s not why she wants to tell him. She proved him wrong by succeeding, and she has succeeded, if her estimate from tonight is any consideration, and that’s not even counting the three people asking about spring weddings at the manor, but that’s not why she wants to tell him either.

But he didn’t stay and he might not care, and she doesn’t want people looking at her anymore. She doesn’t want to think about being open and alone at a cabin when she couldn’t find it in herself to fight with him, but she can’t help it. 

The next musical guest starts on the ball drop broadcast on the tv and she uses the opportunity to sneak upstairs. 

The second floor is a different atmosphere than the first, people milling around largely sitting and watching tv or talking in small groups. She looks at Hiccup’s closed, locked bedroom door for a second and contemplates going back down for the keys, but that would be too close to something while being nothing at all. 

The stairs to the third floor are freshly mopped but still creaky, and there’s a layer of dust on the floor when she opens the guest room door, meaning that no one has been in here since Eret used it before the wedding. 

It’s quiet, finally, except for the base from karaoke downstairs, thrumming in the antique light fixture over the old desk in the corner. When she turns on the desk light, it reflects off of the single pane window, blurring her view of the snow outside but not putting out enough light to leak under the door and reveal her location. 

She sits on the bed and pulls out her phone, resolving to torture herself for the next thirty two minutes and nothing more. At midnight, she’ll drop it. 

Resolutions are bullshit, you can put your mind to anything at any time of year and your success depends on determination and general resolve, but it’s a good deadline anyway. 

Hiccup hasn’t posted anything on Facebook. 

There are some pictures from the week leading up to Christmas, mostly pictures he’d been tagged in that other people posted. Ruffnut did her due diligence, there are two of them ice skating and one of Abby throwing a snowball at him, which Ruffnut couldn’t have taken, but somehow got anyway. He’s smiling, the expression lighting up his whole face, snow stuck in the hair that was just starting to look like she remembered it. She’s not in the frame, just a ball of snow that she remembers throwing, and she lets herself remember how he felt on top of her, falling in the snow. 

There’s a picture Eret posted, of them arguing in the kitchen at the ugly sweater party, the caption bemoaning Hiccup’s lack of Christmas spirit in his hideous button up shirt covered in surfing Santa Claus.

There’s a Larson Photography photo from the bachelor party where she and Hiccup are wearing matching, miserable expressions, and Snotlout is laughing in their general direction. She unfriends Larson Photography. 

She should check Instagram and see if she’s gaining any traction there with the idea that she’ll be posting polaroids later. It’s interesting enough that people might be talking about it, but instead she finds herself pulling up Hiccup’s contact and staring at the blank screen. 

She hasn’t texted him since she got this phone and she didn’t bother to move over their thread. Hell, she doesn’t know if this is even still his number. 

Snotlout still has it, and she’d ask him for it if she thought she’d get an answer aside from an irrationally explicit lecture about interrupting his honeymoon. When he gets back, maybe. 

Thinking about the money hitting her account and ensuring that she has at least eleven minutes left of misery time, she looks at the price of a plane ticket to San Diego. It’d be a stretch, considering the hotel rooms are largely out of her reach, and even just thinking about needing one makes her think about the fact that she did reject him. She rejected a week because she couldn’t take it in the context of forever. She rejected a night because she couldn’t take the morning, and if he didn’t want her to visit, he’d be justified. 

That pain only gets to last for eight more minutes, and she lets herself feel it, as fresh and cutting as it was a decade ago. 

Someone knocks on the door and she jumps up, hiding her phone under the antique wool throw at the base of the bed. 

“Occupied!” She squeaks like it’s a bathroom or something, and the doorknob turns before she can rush to stop it. 

“Astrid?” The voice is familiar and impossible, and she blinks when she recognizes Hiccup’s silhouette in the doorway. 

“What are you doing here?” She snaps, somewhere between habit and hurt, arms crossing to protect the still vulnerable, never quite healed gouge in her chest. 

“I—shit,” he checks his watch and takes a step into the room, the light from the desk lamp at an extreme angle across his nervous face. “The National Enquirer thinks that my dad is literally Santa Claus, and the creepy photographer was literally paparazzi.” He swallows hard, foot dragging another halting step forward, floor creaking, “and I’m in love with you.” 

She feels frozen, like an icicle primed to fall and shatter. 

“That’s…slow down,” she barely whispers, throat dry and terrified. 

“I can’t,” he gestures at her, at nothing, at the party downstairs, “I’ve got four minutes—”

“You _left_ ,” she gets his urgency at starts at her most important accusation and he nods. 

“I didn’t know what else to do.” He clears his throat, “that’s not an excuse. But the entire last week, I haven’t thought about anything but you. I—you were right, when you said I didn’t think about you after I left last time, it’s because I wouldn’t have been able to do it. If I’d acknowledged how I felt…And I did all of it to make some name for myself, but it didn’t feel like anything once I saw you again. It felt…I didn’t care when I got back and couldn’t tell you everything.” 

She knows the feeling and nods numbly, looking at him like the ghost that’s supposed to live in this room. The ghost she’s never believed in, and the silence stretches like the shadows across the floor, shimmering in the fragile lamplight. 

A TV downstairs says something like one-minute left and Hiccup’s face breaks, expression urgent and desperate as he sets careful hands on her forearms, hands shaking and too warm. 

“Astrid, please, I—I’m sorry—”

“Are you staying?” She frowns, itching to touch him, wondering how she ever managed to say no in that bed with him, his eyes bright in the darkness, mistletoe over their heads. For all her talk about determination, she doesn’t know if she’s strong enough to do that again, and she closes her eyes for a second break from his penetrating green gaze. “Would you, if I asked?” 

“Are you asking?” His hand on her cheek shocks her, thumb too close to the corner of her mouth, and the countdown starts downstairs, the roar starting at ten. 

“Yes.” 

Nine. 

Eight. 

“Yeah,” he exhales, other hand sliding to her shoulder. Seven. Six. “I’ll stay, we’ll figure it out.” Five. Four. “You’re here and that’s where I need to be.” 

Three. 

She wants to tell him that she needs to be with him too, that this miserable week proved it, that she couldn’t stop thinking of him either. She wants to show him her phone, the research on plane tickets still on its screen. She wants to plan, because that’s what she’s good at and she wants to plan around him like a holiday. 

Two. 

But there’s no time. 

One. 

“Happy New Year!” The din from downstairs is vaguely recognizable and quickly forgotten as she kisses him, popping onto tip toes with the force of it, flinging her arms around his neck. 

He relaxes instantly, even through his muffled sound of surprise, and his hand slides back into her hair, fingernails grazing against her scalp. And his lips are familiar but different, more history built into them, more yearning, the last week stacked onto years of absence they both pretended not to care about. 

His hand finds her hip as the cheering downstairs subsides, pulling her closer to him, nose nudging gently against her cheek as he pulls back just enough to whisper. 

“Happy New Year.” He kisses her again, slower and deeper, hand combing through her hair to rest between her shoulder blades. 

“Happy New Year,” she mimics, hands in his hair, nose rubbing against his, still cold from outside. 

“Hmm,” he holds her like he’s physically unable to let her go, hands tracing her sweater seams as her lips find the sharp angle of his jaw. 

“What did you say about paparazzi?” She murmurs when he kisses her cheek and her forehead, her own hands finding his sides under a soft flannel shirt that feels like home. 

“Long story.” His laugh is throaty as he pulls away to look at her. “I can fill you in later. We have time.” 

That makes her heart flutter and she smiles to herself. Time. Time is better than any Christmas wish that expires at the stroke of midnight. Time, she can work with. 

“I like that.” 


End file.
